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USDA using lessons learned to implement wild bird monitoring system

USDA is using lessons learned to implement its wild bird surveillance for avian influenza.

Gail Keirn is a public affairs specialist with the department and says during the H5N1 scare in 2006, a large monitoring effort was launched.

“At that time, with state partners and federal biologists collecting wild birds, live sampling as well as hunter-harvested sampling.”

She tells Brownfield USDA collected more than 400,000 samples the next few years.

H5N1 was never discovered during that time, but Keirn says a lot was learned in the process.

“How they’re found in wild birds; their prevalence.  What birds are more likely to carry (the viruses), particularly the low-path avian influenza strain.  So we’ve taken that information and we’re going to be a little more strategic in our planning.”

The highly pathogenic H5N2 strain is responsible for the death of nearly 50 million chicken and turkeys in the U.S. since December.

Keirn says the monitoring system is active in nearly every state.

“With their Departments of Natural Resources, or their wildlife and fisheries departments.  We also are working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey, to help from a federal standpoint.”

Dabbling ducks, which include American green-winged teals, mallards, northern pintails and wood ducks, will be targeted because Keirn says they are more likely to carry the avian flu virus without showing signs.

USDA will also target more than 100 watersheds across the country to collect 41,000 wild bird samples.