A wildlife expert is concerned the outbreak of avian flu in B.C. could be contributing to a dramatic drop in young eagles in the southwestern part of the province.
David Hancock, director of the Hancock Wildlife Foundation, monitors several hundred eagle nests between White Rock and Squamish.
He estimates that this year the production of new eagle chicks is just 20 per cent of normal, perhaps because matching pairs are not laying eggs or because the chicks are dying.
Hancock said there are a number of possible factors in the bird’s deaths, including avian flu.
Other factors could be the poisoning of rodents to make way for more blueberry fields or the declining salmon population or a combination of all of them.
Some recently-deceased eagles in B.C. have been confirmed to have died from avian flu, Hancock added.
Watchers noticed some eagles having trouble laying their eggs, then some birds abandoned the nests early, which means the baby died.
Hancock said, this year, there are currently 23 nests on the White Rock Peninsula and only five with young in them.
“It’s devastating, they’ve all just abandoned their eggs, chicks, or they’ve just died. But we don’t know.”
He said they have never seen such a decline of eagles on the West Coast before.
The provincial government has confirmed wild birds in or near 100 Mile House, Bowen Island, Chilliwack, Kelowna, Metro Vancouver, Vanderhoof and Williams Lake have tested positive for the H5 strains of avian influenza.
According to the BCCDC, wild aquatic birds, such as gulls, terns, ducks, geese, and swans, are the natural reservoir (hosts) of virtually all influenza A subtypes.
However, the organization said that strain rarely causes any deaths in the wild and are typically low pathogenic. It can spread from these birds to domestic poultry where it becomes highly pathogenic.
Hancock said some parents are reluctant to leave their chicks who have died so sometimes it is hard for experts to examine what they might have died from.
“In most cases, the adults guard their newly-fledged chicks for about seven, eight days and then they abandon the chick, they just leave them,” he said.
“The kids stay around the nest site for about four or five days and they get hungrier and hungrier.”
He said they usually then follow their parents north to northern B.C. and Alaska to feast on the dead salmon there.
“So we have a very small window between August and September when there are no eagles in the Fraser Valley,” Hancock added. “Most people don’t recognize this.”
He said they put the first live-streaming camera in an eagle’s nest in the spring of 2006.
They now have five different nests with cameras and 62 years of collective footage.
However, the foundation monitors about 600 territories of eagle’s nests in the Fraser Valley.
Recent outbreaks of avian flu have been confirmed on farms in British Columbia and Alberta by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
In early June, outbreaks were declared in small flocks at three widely-separated B.C. farms in Peace River, Sechelt and Summerland.
An additional commercial outbreak was reported in Langley Township on June 8 that brought the total number of infected farms in the province to 16.
“We’re having a devastating decline,” Hancock said. “Is this going to continue for a few years or is this going to work its way out? We don’t yet know that.”
Earlier this month, the B.C. government confirmed the Ministry of Agriculture and Food “continues to work closely with the CFIA and B.C. poultry producers to ensure enhanced prevention and preparedness measures are in place to protect poultry flocks.”
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