Bird flu fears have focused on the poultry and dairy industries and human health. But wild animals are threatened, too—at scales no one fully understands.
25,669 Northern Gannets in Canada.
134 harbor and gray seals along the coast of Maine.
21 California Condors in the western U.S.
These are just a tiny fraction of the wild victims of a strain of high pathogenicity avian influenza—what we colloquially call bird flu. The virus, which scientists call H5N1, has spread like wildfire around the globe in recent years, surprising and horrifying scientists at every unpredictable turn. And while most people have fretted about the rising price of eggs, the possibility of viruses in our milk and the risk of a pandemic in humans, countless wild animals are dying almost entirely out of our view—so many that even the limited tallies scientists can make are incomprehensibly large. “It’s easier to treat the numbers as numbers and not think too hard about what they really represent,” says Stephanie Avery-Gomm, a conservation scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada. “But if you do take that time to think about it, it’s pretty sad.”