HPAI confirmed on Yukon Delta NWR

Birds that USFWS sent in from the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) for testing for highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) have tested positive. Sabines gulls, glaucous gulls, and black brant all tested positive for HPAI.

Bryan Daniels writes:

Birds that USFWS sent in from the Yukon Delta NWR for testing for Highly pathogenic avian influenza have tested positive. Sabines gulls, glaucous gulls, and black brant all tested positive for HPAI. (Bethel and Kusilvak census areas: https://dec.alaska.gov/eh/vet/announcements/avian-influenza-outbreaks/)

The 1 cackling goose tested positive for low pathogenic, but not high pathogenic. A spectacled eider and pintail also tested negative for any Avian influenza.

We are still awaiting results from a lapland longspur, dunlin, beaver, sandhill crane, and mew gull (short-billed gull). We have also swabbed more gulls, a parasitic jaeger, a river otter, black turnstone, and more black brant in order to be tested without sending full carcasses in.

Individuals that we were unable to swab but were found dead have been: a dead arctic tern, a dead snowy owl, dead parasitic jaeger, and long-billed dowitcher. These seem to have been singular cases and not-widespread symptoms in the species, so unknown if related to HPAI, but in locations that we know HPAI to now be prevalent.

A few emperor geese on the nests were exhibiting some head-shaking behavior and were swabbed and blood drawn for HPAI sampling, and those individuals successfully hatched their nests. The head shaking I reported earlier in cackling geese and emperor geese has not been seen nearly as frequently, as the non-breeding individuals exhibiting that behavior left the nesting area to (presumably) go molt. Nesting effort within our study areas samples have been reportedly lower in 2022 than past years.