26 August 2026
H5N1 bird flu has arrived in Australia, and Victoria is now among the states with confirmed cases in wild birds. A recent webinar hosted by the Australian Conservation Foundation Community Canberra brought together Professor Hugh Possingham (President, BirdLife Australia) and Kim Farley (President, Canberra Birds) to explain what's coming and what communities can actually do.
Project Platypus staff attended and here is what we learned:
Dr. Possingham first emphasized that the arrival of H5N1 was never a question of if, but when, and there was nothing that could have stopped it. It will move across the continent.
Possingham was clear that this is not a reason for despair — diseases very rarely drive extinctions on their own, and populations that come through tend to pass on some resistance. The real risk is to species already reduced to small numbers, where losing 20 or 30 per cent of a population is catastrophic.
Moreover he noted that, because we knew it was coming, Australia has been preparing behind the scenes for some time and has the benefit of learning from the experiences of all the countries who were affected before us.
We know the birds most at risk are those that gather in numbers or eat other birds: ducks, geese and swans, seabirds, shorebirds and terns, and birds of prey. This does, unfortunately, include our local threatened powerful owls.
Songbirds on the other hand, who make up more than half the world's bird species, only represent two to three per cent of recorded infections. This is good news for our smaller woodland threatened birds like brown treecreeper.
So what can we do?
According to Dr. Possingham, the single most useful thing our landcare community can do is the work we're already doing.
We can't stop individual birds getting sick, or stop the flu from spreading across the country, but we can make populations more resilient by reducing every other pressure on them — fox and cat control, habitat restoration, revegetation, and keeping disturbance away from wetlands, sandbars and beach roosts. Healthy birds in healthy populations fare better.
At home, be thoughtful about bird baths. Empty, scrub and disinfect them daily, and spread the water across a few smaller baths rather than one busy one — a crowd of a dozen birds from several species at a single bath is the kind of congregation that spreads the virus. After rain, take the bath away altogether and only put it back once the puddles have dried up; birds shouldn't become wholly reliant on a single point source.
Any supplementary feeding should be reduced or stopped, though if birds are used to being fed, phase it down rather than stopping abruptly.
What about our threatened powerful owls? We can't protect them from bird flu, but we can protect them from another threat:
Owls that hunt around homes, sheds and stockyards are regularly killed by second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (SGARs) — rat baits containing brodifacoum, bromadiolone, difenacoum, difethialone or flocoumafen. A poisoned rat wanders, slow and easy to catch, for up to two weeks, which makes it more likely to be taken by an owl. BirdLife Australia names Powerful Owls alongside Southern Boobooks, Wedge-tailed Eagles and Tawny Frogmouths among the species found dead carrying dangerous levels of these poisons. Moreover, an owl carrying a sub-lethal dose is a weakened owl, and a weakened bird is the one least likely to survive a bird flu outbreak.
Regulation of these chemicals is tightening, but plenty of product remains in sheds — so check what's on your shelf. If the label lists one of those five actives, dispose of it through your council's chemical collection. Snap traps, exclusion and first-generation baits (warfarin, coumatetralyl) all control rodents without moving the poison up the food chain.
BirdLife Australia's guide to what to buy and what to avoid is at birdlife.org.au/a-guide-to-rat-poison-alternatives, with background on the problem and the current push for stronger controls at birdlife.org.au/protect-aussie-birds-from-lethal-sgar-rat-poisons.
If you find sick or dead birds: Avoid, record, report.
- Don't touch or move the bird, and keep dogs away
- Photograph it from a distance and note the location and date
- In Victoria, report clusters of five or more sick or dead birds of any species, or even a single sick or dead waterbird, shorebird, seabird, bird of prey or marine mammal, to the Emergency Animal Disease Hotline on 1800 675 888 or via the DEECA online form
- Birdwatchers can also log sightings through BirdLife's Bird Impact Tracker in Birdata
- Removal and disposal is a job for trained officers with proper protective gear, not for volunteers.
More ideas on how to support:
BirdLife Australia has pulled together practical guidance, regularly updated FAQs, a downloadable fact sheet and the Birdata sightings tracker at http://birdlife.org.au/h5n1-avian-influenza.
You can also add your name to the call for a $200 million federal wildlife resilience package at http://birdlife.org.au/call-for-stronger-protection-h5-bird-flu.
Elia Pirtle
Landcare Facilitator