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A New Tool to Fight Avian Flu
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Whooper swan marked with a GPS transmitter
©B. Chun, Korea National Museum
| Everyone knows that air travel can make people sick. And especially, susceptible to flu. Turns out that migrating birds also risk flu transmission as they wing their way from breeding to wintering grounds. As a group of wild whooper swans is flying south across Eurasia in preparation for the coming winter, land-bound scientists are using solar-powered GPS devices to track their journeys. These unique studies will shed light onto how wild birds may be involved in the spread of avian influenza.
A team of biologists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and other agencies captured the whooper swans in early August on the grassland steppe of far eastern Mongolia, near the borders with Russian and China. The birds were targeted during their annual molt, which occurs after the breeding season and renders the swans flightless for a brief period. Small solar-powered transmitters were affixed with backpack harnesses on ten large swans. The harnesses are made of Teflon ribbon that deteriorates and falls off the birds within a few years.
The strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) known as H5N1 for which the scientists are monitoring the birds is lethal for a variety of species, especially poultry and some waterfowl. When transmitted to people through close contact with infected birds, the virus can be deadly. Leaders across the world are concerned about a potential pandemic threat should the virus become transmissible from human to human.
The whooper swan surveillance project is a collaborative effort by an international team of scientists. In addition to WCS, team members represent the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS), and the Mongolian Academy of Sciences (MAS). The project is part of the Wild Bird Global Avian Influenza Network for Surveillance (GAINS) program funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
“We are endeavoring to understand the role wild birds may play in the spread of H5N1,” said Dr. Scott Newman, a Wildlife Conservation Society field vet working as International Wildlife Coordinator for Avian Influenza for FAO and based in Rome, Italy. “Although poultry and bird trade are probably the primary routes of movement, migratory birds are likely involved in some areas.”
Whooper swans drew increased attention after large numbers perished in Mongolia and western China in 2005 and 2006 in areas where few poultry are present. Subsequent sampling of the dead swans by WCS scientists Drs. Martin Gilbert and William Karesh verified that some were infected with H5N1. This discovery suggested that HPAI may be moving through the region and could potentially spread to other areas. Knowledge of where these migratory bird populations fly in the winter will help determine the potential routes the disease could follow. The satellite tracking data also serves another purpose, helping conservationists determine the non-breeding ranges of birds and how they carry out long-distance migrations.
“Although we are sampling wild birds for avian influenza in the field, we will not be able to fully understand their role in this disease unless we better understand their movements,” said Dr. Karesh, director of the Field Veterinary Program for WCS and coordinator of the GAINS system. “WCS samples birds in East Asia under the GAINS program, but when we find infected birds, we need to know where they are going.”
Learn More
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A comprehensive database of information on international wild bird avian influenza surveillance and migratory bird activity is available at www.gains.org.
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