Biosecurity measures were put in place at Oamaru’s little penguin colony yesterday to prevent the spread of the bird flu and staff working with wildlife at other hotspots in the South, including Dunedin’s wildlife hospital, penguin colonies, the Royal Albatross colony, Orokonui Ecosanctuary and the city’s sea lion and seal colonies, are ready to put plans into action.
Oamaru Penguins staff set up foot wash stations at entrances to the colony building and the seal viewing area yesterday in order to protect the wildlife there.
Oamaru Penguins science and environmental manager Philippa Agnew was busy setting up the site yesterday.
She told the Otago Daily Times the simple biosecurity measure helped reduce the risk of inadvertently moving disease into the birds’ habitat.
Nearly 1000 little penguin chicks fledged in the most recent, record-breaking, breeding season at the colony, and another 200 eggs have already been laid this season.
‘‘It’s all go out there.’’
They had been planning for a while what to do if the virus arrived, given it had been present globally for a ‘‘long time’’, she said.
Staff would be doing daily checks at the site for any warning signs.
At this stage, the colony’s rehabilitation facility would stay open and it would continue responding to reports of sick or injured little penguins.
Dunedin Wildlife Hospital general manager Suzanne Stephenson said staff at the Dunedin hospital were taking the situation very seriously, and also had protocols in place to stop the spread of the virus.
‘‘It’s arrival is obviously a very important development, but for us at the hospital, it is very much business as usual.
‘‘We have a well-established infection prevention and quarantine protocol, and we’ll implement that as we need to, to protect our patients, and our staff of course, and the wildlife in our area.’’
She said it was still too early to say if there was likely to be an influx of wildlife coming in, infected with the virus.
‘‘If we did, we would take instructions from MPI and Doc.’’
Ms Stephenson said if anyone came across three or more of the same species that were sick or dead, they should not touch the animals, but take a specific GPS location of the animals using their mobile phone, and report it to the MPI hotline (0800 80 99 66).
New Zealand Sea Lion Trust spokeswoman Jordana Whyte said the virus could also spread to sea lions and seals, and the trust was ‘‘deeply concerned’’ about its arrival in New Zealand.
‘‘It does have potential to decimate the New Zealand sea lion population — just when we’re starting to get some traction on the mainland population growth.’’
The mainland population potentially had some natural advantages over the subantarctic population, in that there were not as many, they did not congregate in large groups in the same way and did not engage in the same breeding behaviour that brought them all together in one place for two months out of the year.
‘‘That’s the only thing they’ve got going for them here.
‘‘We can hope that we get perhaps some isolated events that don’t lead to widespread outbreaks, but I wouldn’t say that hope is a great strategy.’’
Miss Whyte said one of the trust’s advisory board members was travelling to North America to meet people doing vaccine trials to learn how it might be applied to the New Zealand sea lion population.
‘‘It would have been much better if the virus had held off for another year, because I think we could be further along the track with understanding what the possibilities are with vaccines.’’
Overseas, up to 90% of some sea lion populations had died.
Department of Conservation biosecurity technical adviser Suliana Teasdale said Doc did not know what would happen if the disease spread here, compared with the impact on overseas wildlife.
‘‘We have quite unique fauna and marine mammals and birds, so it could be quite different, but we’re just being prepared.’’
Otago Peninsula Trust ecotourism manager Hoani Langsbury said the albatross colony at Taiaroa Head had been monitoring red-billed gulls for the virus for the past two years and if it was discovered in the local population, it would give staff time to have the albatross vaccinated by Doc before it spread to the colony.
If it did spread to the colony, it was likely it would have to be closed for some time, he said.
Orokonui Ecosanctuary communications leader Taylor Davies-Colley said some of the species at the sanctuary were threatened, such as the takahē and the kākā, so the impacts on those small populations could be great, but Doc had a plan to vaccinate breeding birds in the most threatened species.
Compared with the kind of seabird colonies that had been affected worldwide, Orokonui was probably not as high risk, apart from those really threatened species, he said.
