Australia reports first bird flu case in endangered sea lion

Australian authorities on Sunday reported the first case of the H5N1 avian influenza in an endangered sea lion, reported Xinhua.

Environment Minister in South Australia (SA), Emily Bourke, told reporters that testing detected the highly pathogenic strain in an Australian sea lion that was found dead on Friday on Kangaroo Island about 100 km off the coast of Adelaide. She said that the sea lion was already being monitored while it recovered from a shark attack. "We found that it was actually not the shark attack that killed the sea lion. It was the bird flu," Bourke said.

The National Parks and Wildlife Service estimates that there are fewer than 12,000 Australian sea lions in the wild, 85 percent of which are in SA. Kangaroo Island's Seal Bay, where the bird flu case was detected, is home to the third largest colony of Australian sea lions. "We've seen quite a number of mammal cases, but the Australian sea lion is the rarest seal found in our Australian waters," Bourke said.

According to the latest national data, as of Friday, there had been 521 confirmed events of H5N1 bird flu in Australia, 286 of which have been in SA.