Five Australian bird species face extinction if avian influenza reaches their populations, according to a federal government analysis that ranks more than 2,000 native birds and animals by their vulnerability to the deadly H5 strain now spreading across the continent.
The Herald petrel, listed as critically endangered, sits under extreme threat alongside the endangered Christmas Island frigate and three vulnerable species: the Houtman Abrolhos lesser noddy, imperial shag and Heard shag. More than 80 endangered and critically endangered species received a high or worse threat ranking. "The results are shocking, it really is a list of doom," said Invasive Species Council CEO Jack Gough. "Five bird species facing 'extreme risk' … basically if bird flu gets into these populations, extinction is what we can expect."
A Crisis Years in the Making
The first mass mortality of Australian wildlife from H5 bird flu was confirmed earlier this week on an island off South Australia's south-east coast. Epidemiologist Raina MacIntyre said the strain, a special mutation that arose in 2020, has caused unprecedented devastation globally. "What we've seen in other countries is how it's just swept through and decimated different species," Professor MacIntyre said.
Australia is the last continent to face this threat. That's given authorities time to prepare, but it's also meant the nation's unique marsupials and monotremes remain untested against a virus that doesn't exist anywhere else they live. "We have these unique species of wildlife that don't exist anywhere else in the world and it's unknown," Professor MacIntyre said.
Underfunded Protection Efforts
The endangered Tasmanian devil and eastern quolls rank among the highest-risk mammals. They'd likely survive infection, but their populations would be severely reduced. Dolphins, whales, sea lions and seals would also experience significant impacts if infected.
Gough said the biosecurity response had been excellent, but funding to protect wildlife had gone backwards. "We won't be able to stop bird flu spreading through wildlife, so the best response to that needs to be dealing with all the other threats," he said. That means removing foxes, cats and rats from islands, ensuring wetlands stay connected, and preventing habitat destruction in key nesting areas. "That work hasn't been happening at a scale which reflects the seriousness of this list," he said.
He called for an emergency $200 million investment into wildlife resilience, separate from the government's biosecurity response. "The work on where those projects should be has already been done by state governments," he said. "What's missing is funding. This should have been funded three years ago when we started preparing [for bird flu] but the next best time is right now before the spring breeding season."
Government Response Falls Short
Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt said it's likely bird flu will start spreading inland after dozens of coastal detections, with the spring breeding season bringing additional risk factors. "This is likely to be a very serious event," he said.
Watt said the government had invested about $47 million over the last couple of years in building up threatened species populations. "Some of that's by removing feral cats, feral pigs, other kinds of invasive species that are reducing those populations," he said.
Vaccinating wild bird populations isn't viable, Watt said. "It requires two doses of vaccines, and it's hard enough to catch these birds once, let alone twice to give them a booster, so realistically it's not possible to vaccinate native birds," he said. Trials are underway for birds in captivity. "We've been funding a lot of work in captive breeding, so in zoos or other facilities, building up the populations of some of our more threatened birds, and that's where we could potentially be looking at vaccination in that captive environment."
Why This Matters:
Australia's unique biodiversity faces an unprecedented threat that could permanently erase species found nowhere else on Earth. The gap between what experts say is needed—$200 million in emergency wildlife resilience funding—and what's been allocated reveals how conservation infrastructure has been chronically underfunded even as the crisis approached. With the spring breeding season looming and inland spread anticipated, the window for protecting vulnerable populations through habitat conservation and invasive species removal is closing rapidly. The loss of these species wouldn't just diminish Australia's natural heritage; it would represent an irreversible failure of public institutions to protect what cannot be replaced, despite years of advance warning that other continents didn't have.