AlaskaDenise
In Memoriam
http://www.adn.com/life/health/birdflu/story/7589913p-7501055c.html
Last Modified: April 2, 2006 at 04:55 AM
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Stock up on ammo, folks, the bird flu's comin'.
The federales are gearing up a $4 million program to find it in Alaska. None of the bird authorities seem to have any doubt that it will get here sometime, someway, somehow.
The latest virulent strain -- H5N1, made obvious by the thoroughness with which it decimates chicken farms -- has already spread from Southeast Asia to Asia to the Middle East to North Africa and Southern Europe and now from Southern Europe into Northern Europe and from Northern Africa into most of that continent.
Can we be far behind?
If it doesn't get here this year, it's sure to arrive next year or the year after or the year after that. Alaska is a migratory crossroads for birds. We don't just get them winging in from points south, although that's the direction from which the majority of summer visitors come.
We also get them coming from Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, even New Zealand and Australia. The bar-tailed godwit, a shorebird that breeds in Western Alaska -- the great continental mixing bowl for many bird species -- winters in Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.
Given these realities, not to mention the way in which sophisticated international travel moves everything everywhere, bird flu is bound to get here.
The $10 million question is "then what?''
The answer would appear simple: Kill 'em all and let God sort it out.
That's pretty much been the answer elsewhere. Eradicate the carrier species before it can spread the disease. Worldwide, more than 200 million birds, primarily domestic poultry, have been killed to date to keep this pandemic from growing.
Just think, by summer we could all be engaged in trying to save America by shooting arctic warblers and gray-cheek thrushes, two of the possible carrier species that have been identified.
Then again, maybe not.
No one in Alaska officialdom is talking about massive bird culls. For one thing, such talk would be politically incorrect in our animal-friendly society. For another, most of the agencies involved in the hunt for bird flu exist to preserve bird species, not destroy them. Bird slaughters would run counter to their institutional ethos.
Should the flu be detected, said Bruce Woods, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage, the policy will be to "monitor'' the situation and possibly set up an environmental "containment zone.''
The latter is the polite way of describing a bird-free zone. Since birds don't listen to quarantine orders, about the only way to prevent them from intermingling is to create areas where there are no birds.
How well this would work in Alaska is unknown. Tom Rothe, waterfowl coordinator for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, seems a little skeptical.
"We don't have any practical strategies'' is how he described the containment plan. But then Rothe doesn't think the great Alaska bird-flu hunt has much to do with containment anyway.
Rothe thinks the state is mainly going to function as the warning system for Lower 48 poultry farms. Think of Alaska's role in the New World Order as the Distant Early Warning line for Tyson Foods Inc.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
"It's important to detect (this flu) when it hits North America,'' Rothe said. "It's deadly to chickens.''
Yes, indeed. If the chicken farmers in the Lower 48 didn't get that warning to move all their birds indoors away from any possible contact with wild birds because the bird flu's a comin', Col. Sanders could end up flat out of work.
The fact that federal officials are spending $4 million to detect a virus everyone expects to get here sooner or later, but against which we can do nothing, might make some people think of the great bird-flu hunt as some sort of federal boondoggle.
But, hey, it's our boondoggle. It's putting some Alaskans to work swabbing the butts of birds, and some of the spin-offs from the project could at least prove scientifically useful.
Though sampling for bird flu is the primary reason for handling 15,000 live and dead birds this spring, Rothe said, biologists have come up with some supplemental to-dos.
The live birds are going to be banded, which helps everyone learn more about migratory routes. And feather and blood samples are expected to be taken from a fair number of other birds for various forms of testing that could help to better define the genetics of some species or the pathogens threatening others.
Meanwhile, for all those Alaska waterfowlers who might still be worried about picking up bird flu from ducks or geese shot in the 49th state, rest assured that there is now one bit of good news authorities have learned about bird flu:
It is not easy for humans to catch.
Basically, the experts say, you have to inhale the dust of pulverized bird excrement. So unless you're doing your duck hunting in someone's chicken coop, you should be fine.
Or, as Woods put it: "I'd be safer kissing a wild bird than I would be taking a bike ride along the Seward Highway.''
Probably about 100 times safer.
Or, given the way Alaskans drive, maybe a whole lot more.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to Alaskan humor folks. BTW, I have done some cycling and I would NEVER ride on the Seward Highway.
.
Last Modified: April 2, 2006 at 04:55 AM
<!-- end /published/index.comp --><!-- Component: ADN : component/redesign/modules/primcol/story/storyhead.comp --><!-- Component: ADN : component/redesign/modules/primcol/story/inset.comp -->
<!-- Component: ADN : component/redesign/modules/primcol/story/inset.comp -->
Stock up on ammo, folks, the bird flu's comin'.
The federales are gearing up a $4 million program to find it in Alaska. None of the bird authorities seem to have any doubt that it will get here sometime, someway, somehow.
The latest virulent strain -- H5N1, made obvious by the thoroughness with which it decimates chicken farms -- has already spread from Southeast Asia to Asia to the Middle East to North Africa and Southern Europe and now from Southern Europe into Northern Europe and from Northern Africa into most of that continent.
Can we be far behind?
If it doesn't get here this year, it's sure to arrive next year or the year after or the year after that. Alaska is a migratory crossroads for birds. We don't just get them winging in from points south, although that's the direction from which the majority of summer visitors come.
We also get them coming from Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, even New Zealand and Australia. The bar-tailed godwit, a shorebird that breeds in Western Alaska -- the great continental mixing bowl for many bird species -- winters in Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.
Given these realities, not to mention the way in which sophisticated international travel moves everything everywhere, bird flu is bound to get here.
The $10 million question is "then what?''
The answer would appear simple: Kill 'em all and let God sort it out.
That's pretty much been the answer elsewhere. Eradicate the carrier species before it can spread the disease. Worldwide, more than 200 million birds, primarily domestic poultry, have been killed to date to keep this pandemic from growing.
Just think, by summer we could all be engaged in trying to save America by shooting arctic warblers and gray-cheek thrushes, two of the possible carrier species that have been identified.
Then again, maybe not.
No one in Alaska officialdom is talking about massive bird culls. For one thing, such talk would be politically incorrect in our animal-friendly society. For another, most of the agencies involved in the hunt for bird flu exist to preserve bird species, not destroy them. Bird slaughters would run counter to their institutional ethos.
Should the flu be detected, said Bruce Woods, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage, the policy will be to "monitor'' the situation and possibly set up an environmental "containment zone.''
The latter is the polite way of describing a bird-free zone. Since birds don't listen to quarantine orders, about the only way to prevent them from intermingling is to create areas where there are no birds.
How well this would work in Alaska is unknown. Tom Rothe, waterfowl coordinator for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, seems a little skeptical.
"We don't have any practical strategies'' is how he described the containment plan. But then Rothe doesn't think the great Alaska bird-flu hunt has much to do with containment anyway.
Rothe thinks the state is mainly going to function as the warning system for Lower 48 poultry farms. Think of Alaska's role in the New World Order as the Distant Early Warning line for Tyson Foods Inc.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
"It's important to detect (this flu) when it hits North America,'' Rothe said. "It's deadly to chickens.''
Yes, indeed. If the chicken farmers in the Lower 48 didn't get that warning to move all their birds indoors away from any possible contact with wild birds because the bird flu's a comin', Col. Sanders could end up flat out of work.
The fact that federal officials are spending $4 million to detect a virus everyone expects to get here sooner or later, but against which we can do nothing, might make some people think of the great bird-flu hunt as some sort of federal boondoggle.
But, hey, it's our boondoggle. It's putting some Alaskans to work swabbing the butts of birds, and some of the spin-offs from the project could at least prove scientifically useful.
Though sampling for bird flu is the primary reason for handling 15,000 live and dead birds this spring, Rothe said, biologists have come up with some supplemental to-dos.
The live birds are going to be banded, which helps everyone learn more about migratory routes. And feather and blood samples are expected to be taken from a fair number of other birds for various forms of testing that could help to better define the genetics of some species or the pathogens threatening others.
Meanwhile, for all those Alaska waterfowlers who might still be worried about picking up bird flu from ducks or geese shot in the 49th state, rest assured that there is now one bit of good news authorities have learned about bird flu:
It is not easy for humans to catch.
Basically, the experts say, you have to inhale the dust of pulverized bird excrement. So unless you're doing your duck hunting in someone's chicken coop, you should be fine.
Or, as Woods put it: "I'd be safer kissing a wild bird than I would be taking a bike ride along the Seward Highway.''
Probably about 100 times safer.
Or, given the way Alaskans drive, maybe a whole lot more.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to Alaskan humor folks. BTW, I have done some cycling and I would NEVER ride on the Seward Highway.
.