In the Vesisaari region, the epidemic has killed tens of thousands of birds, according to an expert from Birdlife Norway. In the spring, we will find out if there are any birds left alive in Norway’s largest colony of little jays.
In June, in northern Norway’s Finnmark, or Ruija, dead little kajavi were found. A devastating infectious disease had broken out. In July, 15,000 dead carp had already been collected in Vesisaari. The cause of death is the highly pathogenic bird flu virus H5N1.
– We have had a terrible disease, influenza here in Ruija. Around Vesisaari, there are at least 20,000 – 30,000 deaths of little egrets, a member of the Norwegian Finnmark Board of Directors tells BirdLife on the phone Dag Gjerstad.
According to Gjerstad, the Ekkerøya minnow colony, which is more than 10 kilometers from the center of Vesisaari, is the largest in Norway.
During the breeding season, up to 80,000 little egrets live on the rocky cliffs of the promontory.
– There is a bird mountain in Ekkerøya where 30,000 – 40,000 pairs of little terns nest, and now half are dead.
Gjerstad considers it possible that the bird flu epidemic will destroy Ekkerøya’s little egret colony.
– That’s a bad thing. No one can know how long a colony will last. Next year it will probably be over, now it’s August and the matter will be resolved only after the winter, Gjerstad estimates.
The veterinarian of the Norwegian Food Agency’s Mattilsynet, interviewed by Lappi in Vesisaari in July, considered the destruction of the colony also possible.
According to Gjerstad, the epidemic among the birds of perhaps the most famous seabird colony in Northern Norway, on the island of Vuoreija Hornøya, has just mowed down the little jays, but the other bird species in the colony have been spared mass death, at least for now.
– At the moment, it seems that the flu does not hit seagulls, gray gulls, puffins and puffins so hard.
The small pea has not been able to withstand the highly pathogenic virus that is easily contagious and causes serious disease.
– It’s just like a person, some people endure, some people die suddenly. It’s the nature of the seagull, it’s a small gull and it doesn’t last long when the disease comes, reflects Gjerstad.
Northern Norwegian terns migrate to the Canadian Labrador Peninsula and the island of Newfoundland, as well as Greenland, for the winter. They then return in early spring to nest on the rocky cliffs of Finnmark.
According to a recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO, the biggest losses from bird flu have been in the order of tens of thousands of birds. Thus, the ongoing epidemic in the Vesisaari region of Northern Norway is one of the worst in the history of wild birds so far.
BirdLife Finland: Norway’s seabird migration does not pass through Finland
According to a Finnish bird expert, the devastating bird flu epidemic in Northern Norway will not affect Finland.
Director of Conservation and Research, BirdLife Finland Teemu Lehtiniemi says that the southward migration routes of seagulls and other seabirds on the coast of the Arctic Ocean in northern Norway run along the coast of Norway.
– The migration routes of northern Norway’s seabirds, terns and also other seagulls that live there do not reach Finland at all. They migrate south along the northern coast and stay there on the ocean side the whole time, says Lehtiniemi.
According to Lehniemi, seabirds from northern Norway end up in Finland occasionally. It has only just been confirmed that this summer in Kemijärvi and Inari in Lapland, individual little egrets killed by bird flu have been found.
The highly pathogenic avian influenza virus H5N1 was first detected in goose farms in China in the late 1990s. In the context of the massive poultry industry, the virus has grown into a global problem and in recent years has caused widespread destruction not only in poultry, but also in wild birds in Europe.