Regional Council Prepares for Bird Flu Incursion

Dan Moskovitz

Over the past five years, bird flu has ravaged bird and mammal alike across the globe. Over 180 million poultry birds have died, as well as untold numbers of wildlife. Human infections, while rare, have a fatality rate over 50%.

Mainland Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific remain the only flu-free regions. But with the Australian-owned subantarctic Heard Island now reporting the virus—an island which many of Aotearoa’s migratory birds visit—it’s a question of when, not if, bird flu arrives in the country. And given its persistence in wild birds, once it arrives, it’s here for good. 

So right now the country is in prep mode. DoC is figuring out how to protect our native birds, MPI is preparing the poultry industry, and regional council’s job will be to protect us. 

“One Health New Zealand—that's Health New Zealand, DoC, and MPI—are advocating for bird carcasses to be left in place to naturally decompose,” said Roger Uys, a senior ecologist at Greater Wellington Regional Council. 

“This reduces the risk of human infections, and it doesn't spread the disease around. The reality, though, is if we have dead birds in a playground or along the beach, we risk exposing the public unnecessarily. 

“If a dog goes and picks up a dead bird, it can get sick and make its owners sick. So this is where we'd remove and dispose of the carcasses.”Regional council will divide its land into back and front country, based on the levels of foot traffic. In the back country, which has less visitors, dead birds will result in council erecting signage. In the front country, a carcass—even just a single one—will trigger removal. 

Interestingly, there isn’t a firm number which divides the front from the back. 

Birds do die naturally from other causes. But once bird flu is confirmed to be in Aotearoa, if there’s a rotting carcass anywhere in the front country, regional council will be removing it, whether we know how it died or not.

Council is currently anticipating lots of call-outs for a single corpse, rather than apocalyptic scenarios involving beaches covered in dead birds. It’ll be expensive though, as council is currently guesstimating costs of around ten thousand per call out. Still, this is one funding crisis council isn’t worried about, for a change of pace. 

“We do carry contingency for this sort of thing,” said Andy Brown, Greater Wellington’s Risk Management and Resilience lead. “And if we got into the worst-case scenario, we’d be looking at redistributing budgets to respond. 

“We'd also be expecting if we did end up in that worst case scenario, there’d be an all-of-government response to bird flu.”

“But we can certainly manage the smaller events within our current budgets.”

If you encounter a bird showing symptoms of avian influenza, please take a video and call the biosecurity hotline: 0800 80 99 66.

Symptoms include falling over, twisting their neck to look upwards, lethargy, and drooping heads. Finding three or more dead birds in one area is also a reason to contact Biosecurity.

Transmission of bird flu to humans is uncommon but not impossible. However, its mortality rate in humans is 52%. Do not touch any bird showing symptoms.