{"id":49776,"date":"2026-06-18T13:35:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T07:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/?p=49776"},"modified":"2026-06-18T13:35:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T07:50:19","slug":"bird-flu-kills-13000-seal-pups-on-remote-australian-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/bird-flu-kills-13000-seal-pups-on-remote-australian-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Bird flu kills 13,000 seal pups on remote Australian island"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p>A pathogenic strain of bird flu killed more than 13,000 elephant seal pups after infecting a breeding colony on a sub-Antarctic volcanic island, Australian scientists said Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers found the remote Heard and McDonald Islands littered with seal carcasses when they arrived on a research expedition in October 2025.<\/p>\n<p>Genetic testing confirmed the contagious H5 bird flu strain had killed seals, penguins and birds living on the rocky outcrop &#8212; the first time it had been detected in one of Australia&#8217;s external territories.<\/p>\n<p>Southern elephant seal pups were the worst hit by the outbreak, scientists from the Australian Antarctic Program said, with mortality in some seal &#8220;harems&#8221; as high as 97 percent.<\/p>\n<p>Ground and aerial surveys conducted in October 2025 and January 2026 counted 13,300 dead elephant seal pups.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;These observations of H5 bird flu at Heard Island and McDonald Island are the first detection in an Australian external territory and show the continued eastward movement of the virus,&#8221; biologist Julie McInnes said.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers said the virus had likely been introduced in August 2025 by infected wildlife that travelled from the Crozet Islands, a sub-Antarctic archipelago about 1,500 kilometres (930 miles) to the northwest.<\/p>\n<p>The Heard and McDonald Islands &#8212; uninhabited by humans &#8212; unexpectedly hit the headlines when they were included on US President Donald Trump&#8217;s list of international tariffs in April 2025.<\/p>\n<p>Lying 4,000 kms southwest of mainland Australia, the islands are fearsomely wild.\u00a0Access is allowed only with permission from the Australian government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A pathogenic strain of bird flu killed more than 13,000 elephant seal pups after infecting a breeding colony on a sub-Antarctic volcanic island, Australian scientists said Thursday. Researchers found the remote Heard and McDonald Islands littered with seal carcasses when they arrived on a research expedition in October 2025. Genetic testing confirmed the contagious H5 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49776"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49778,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49776\/revisions\/49778"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}