Australia Confirms Its First Known Bird Flu Death in a Dolphin

Australia spent decades blissfully free from highly pathogenic H5 strains of bird flu, which have spread chaos (and occasionally killed human beings) across the world’s more interconnected continents. That is until this June, when five migratory seabirds, including three vulture-like giant petrels, tested positive for H5N1 along the Commonwealth nation’s southwestern coast. And now those birds are spreading avian influenza to Aussie mammals, infecting a red fox in an Adelaide suburb, killing a seal in Beachport, and—in a historic first down under—fatally infecting a dolphin, whose carcass was discovered in the port city of Goolwa just south of Adelaide. But marine conservation scientist Mike Bossley, once Greenpeace Australia’s first director, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that what most troubled him was the speed with which this dolphin had contracted and died of the disease. “To have one here so soon is very shocking for me and very worrying,” Bossley told ABC, adding that many dolphins’ feeding patterns can leave them especially vulnerable to bird flu. “They follow the birds around because the birds can see the fish better than they can, from the air,” Bossl