California condors will obtain a vaccine for a dangerous pressure of avian influenza that threatens the already severely endangered vulture species
FILE – A California Condor takes to flight on the Los Angeles Zoo on Tuesday, May 2, 2023. California condors will obtain a vaccine for a dangerous pressure of avian influenza that threatens to wipe out the already threatened vulture species, federal officers stated Tuesday May 16, 2023. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service granted emergency approval to the vaccine after greater than a dozen condors not too long ago died from the bird flu, referred to as H5N1. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel,File)
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — California condors will obtain a vaccine for a dangerous pressure of avian influenza that threatens to wipe out the already severely endangered vulture species, federal officers stated Tuesday.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service granted emergency approval for use of the vaccine after greater than a dozen condors not too long ago died from the bird flu, referred to as H5N1.
There are fewer than 350 California condors in the wild, in flocks that span from the Pacific Northwest to Baja California, Mexico.
A pilot protection find out about will start this month in North American vultures, a equivalent species, permitting investigators to test for any hostile results sooner than they offer vaccines to the endangered condors, in line with an agriculture division remark.
The division licensed the emergency vaccination “because these birds are critically endangered, closely monitored, and their population is very small which allows close monitoring of the vaccine,” the remark stated.
Over the previous yr and a part, thousands and thousands of birds around the U.S. have died from avian flu, together with greater than 430 bald eagles and a few 58 million turkeys and business chickens that have been euthanized to forestall the unfold of the illness.
California’s inhabitants of iconic condors, with their 10-foot (3-meter) wingspans, was once just about burnt up by means of searching right through the California Gold Rush, in addition to by means of poisoning from poisonous pesticide DDT and consuming lead ammunition.
In the Eighties, all 22 California condors left in the wild have been put into captive breeding techniques to save lots of the species. Zoo-bred birds have been first launched into the wild in 1992 and in the years since had been reintroduced into wild habitats.
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