Global Strategies to Protect Seals and Sea Lions from Avian Influenza
When the H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza virus was discovered on a poultry farm in Asia in 1996, there was little indication that it would become so widespread and so destructive. Within 30 years, it reached every continental region except Oceania, infecting more than 400 million poultry, tens of thousands of elephant seals and sea lions, about 1,000 people and many other mammals and wild birds.
Pinnipeds, which include seals and sea lions, have been hit unusually hard by the virus.
A study from the University of California, Davis, steps back to look at the overall impact of the virus on pinnipeds worldwide and offers recommendations for moving forward to monitor, characterize risk and build resilience in the affected species. It also suggests ways to help prevent the virus from reaching currently unaffected but vulnerable pinniped species, such as the endangered Hawaiian monk seal or Galapagos sea lion.
The paper is published in Philosophical Transactions B as part of a themed issue, “Managing Infectious Marine Diseases in Wild Populations.” It states that throughout Peru, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, highly pathogenic avian flu outbreaks have killed at least 36,000 South American sea lions, 17,400 southern elephant seals and 1,000 South American fur seals.
“There is a huge, unprecedented conservation risk,” said corresponding author Christine Johnson, director of the Institute for Pandemic Insights at the UC Davis Weill School of Veterinary Medicine. “Influenza is constantly changing, and that is a big problem now that it’s widely circulating in birds and marine mammals.”