AFP
Bart Rutten
editor Nieuwsuur
Bart Rutten
editor Nieuwsuur
Dutch farmers are increasingly successful in keeping bird flu out of their chicken houses. But on the other side of the world, the virus is spreading at a breakneck pace. Now that the virus threatens to spread to Antarctica, experts fear a “mass slaughter”.
Every disadvantage has its advantage, reasons virologist Thijs Kuiken. “At the moment it is still a far-away show.” But when videos of penguins dying en masse soon reach our Instagram timelines, we will finally realize how big this problem is.
The virus has been raging across South America for months. Half a million dead wild birds and mammals have been counted in Peru and Chile alone. The actual number of deaths is probably much higher.
This week it was announced that the virus has also reached the Galapagos Islands for the first time. It’s now spring in the Southern Hemisphere, so birds are migrating south. Antarctica is therefore the logical next step.
It will be a battlefield with millions of deaths.
Ecologist Marcel Klaassen
If bird flu does indeed set foot at the South Pole for the first time in history, the fence is over, says ecologist Marcel Klaassen. There, so many birds live close together that the virus spreads like wildfire. “It will be a battlefield with millions of deaths.”
According to virologist Kuiken, it is not a question of if, but when, an infected bird reaches Antarctica. The chance that penguins are resistant to the virus variant is minuscule, says his colleague Klaassen. “Because there are already known cases of infected penguins in South Africa and South America.”
AFPPenguins often live in very large groups close together
Is there anything we can do to prevent this? Actually not, say the experts. Bird researcher Mardik Leopold from Wageningen University traveled to Antarctica in April and saw with his own eyes how they take measures there that he describes as “feel-good management”.
“When we arrived on our ship, we were instructed to clean everything. Our hands, our shoes. But that doesn’t help. On the roof of our ship were a few birds that had traveled with us. “You have to “shoot me dead,” I said to the skipper. But that is of course a very unwelcome message.”
In countries such as the Netherlands, dead birds in the wild are quickly removed. This slows down further spread. That is not possible in Antarctica. No one lives there, only a handful of scientists who temporarily stay in research stations.
It’s far away, it doesn’t affect our purchasing power.
Virologist Thijs Kuiken
Yet Thijs Kuiken hopes that we properly register which bird species die and how many. This way, scientists can make better policies in the future. Kuiken himself also contributes. He recently wrote a report with other experts on bird flu in South America. “But that was picked up by few media. It is far away, it does not affect our purchasing power.”
Are you allowed to intervene in nature?
Mardik Leopold fantasizes out loud about a revolutionary vaccination strategy: flying over nature reserves with a kind of spray plane to administer a vaccine to penguins. “We are still a long way from that, although it is conceivable for the distant future.” But it is expensive, not yet developed and there are ethical objections. “Are you allowed to intervene in nature?”
First of all: it is not the case that penguins will become completely extinct as a result of bird flu. But this is possible with other bird species, the experts say. Especially the species that have declined significantly in population in recent years as a result of climate change and overfishing.
How bad is that? Is the life of the possibly very last Antarctic cormorant more valuable than that of one of the many seagulls on Texel? Yes, say the experts. It is completely normal for animal species to disappear and others to emerge. But that must happen for ‘natural’ reasons.
“What is a bit unfortunate in this case is that we facilitated this virus,” says Leopold. After all, bird flu originated in the poultry sector, which is increasingly bursting at the seams. He receives support from colleague Klaassen: “If only this was bad luck, like a volcanic eruption. But this disease has nothing to do with nature.”
Nothing more to do?
The course of the virus is difficult to predict. But the most likely scenario is that the current variant will continue to spread for a long time and wild birds will slowly become more immune. A second scenario is more disastrous for humans: the virus mutates in such a way that it becomes transmissible between people and causes a new flu pandemic.
The experts who work with News hour people don’t think things are going that fast. At the same time, they emphasize that almost nothing can be done about the current variant. Idealistic prospects such as reducing the poultry sector will only help against the next virus outbreak.
Until then, we can only hope for a miracle: that the current variant passes the South Pole. Kuiken is not very optimistic and fears that Antarctica is not the last continent. “Because bird flu has not yet reached Australia.”
Nieuwsuur made this video about bird flu in May:
2023-09-23 13:00:02
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