Avian influenza toll on Britain's great skua population could be as high as 80 per cent, says RSPB

 

Great skua - breeding population decimated 

AS many as 80 per cent of Britain's great skua population may have been lost this summer to avian influenza.

At the RSPB's annual meeting, held last weekend, chief executive Beccy Speight spoke of the toll of bird flu which seems to have been most conspicuous in marine species such as skuas, gannets and terns.

She described her particular distress that it had reached Coquet Island, off the Northumberland Coast, home to Britain's last colony of roseate terns.

According to Ms Speight, the likelihood is that "hundreds of thousands" of other birds are also succumbing to the deadly disease, academic research into which is now intense.

At the same meeting, chairman Kevin Cox expressed concern that, against the society's advice, artificially-reared gamebird chicks continued to be imported from abroad for release into the wild for the benefit of a field sports activity  whose participants shoot them as they grow older.

His comments were later criticised by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust who said that there was no scientific evidence of gamebirds contributing to the spread of avian influenza.

Efforts to monitor bird mortalities will be stepped up in the coming weeks followingMonday's designation by Whitehall officials of the whole of Britain as an avian flu prevention zone.

* Photo: Chell Hill via Wikimedia Commons