Bird Flu Blues

Spring is coming, and with it visitors are flocking to zoos across the country to enjoy the warm weather.  Many visitors won't have been to their zoo for months, having stayed home during the winter (or perhaps for the duration of the pandemic), and are excited to see what changes have been made since they last came.   One change that they might notice may strike them as a little odd.  At zoos across the eastern United States, including many of the facilities east of the Mississippi, birds are disappearing from exhibits.

Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza continues to spread across the country, impacting more zoos and aquariums each week.  So far, I haven't heard of any US zoos that have suffered losses to the disease.  If that is the case, than it's a testimony to how seriously zoos are taking the threat.  As soon as cases are reported in neighboring counties, many facilities are pulling at-risk birds (essentially those that have the ability to be infected by wild birds, especially wild waterfowl) and removing them to safe locations.  Staff who have exposure to birds outside of the zoo - such as those who might have pet birds, or work part-time at pet stores, or something similar - are being segregated from zoo birds to reduce the risk of infection.  Feeding aviaries and walk-through aviaries are being shut down for the duration of this outbreak.

As the weather warms, the spring waterfowl migration will be ending.  Hopefully after that, the disease will start of abate and things can return to normal.  Unless of course, this is becoming the new normal.  I feel like we've had several similar concerns about HPAI in recent years, whereas we seldom worried about it when I was new to the field.  Are we just more diligent now?  Or is this disease a new fixture of our lives, a constant background threat to our birds that we're just going to have to learn to live with?