Australian officials, citing “psychosocial risks,” said they will evacuate the Macquarie Island research station this fall so people there don’t witness bird flu ravaging the elephant seal population come springtime.
Australia’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water said in a release last week that it plans to evacuate the 24 scientists, tradespeople and support staff living at the research station later this month or in early October.
The island also supports elephant seal populations that live near the station’s buildings, with thousands of seal pups born on the island each spring.
Although bird flu hasn’t been detected on the island yet, Australian environmental officials are anticipating a mass die-off caused by it during the elephant seal breeding season, due to the species’ high susceptibility to the disease. Bird flu death rates for seal pups in other Australian-administered islands north of Antarctica have been known to exceed 90%.
“While the risk to humans of H5 bird flu is considered low, we can’t ignore the psychosocial risks of living near potentially large numbers of affected animals,” DCCEEW Deputy Secretary Sean Sullivan said, adding that given how isolated and challenging life on Macquarie Island is for people, it behooves the department to mitigate any additional risks.
Some scientists agree with the decision by Australian officials. Dr. Marcela Uhart, a University of California, Davis, wildlife veterinarian who previously saw an elephant seal die-off in Argentina, told the journal Science that “nothing prepares you for thousands and thousands of animals that are dying in a very short time.”
Other scientists argue that leaving the island costs researchers the opportunity to glean data from the potential die-off.
Jane Younger, an Antarctic disease ecologist at the University of Tasmania, told Science that “if the response to that risk is to withdraw scientists whenever a serious outbreak becomes possible, that has profound implications for our ability to understand and respond to future ecosystem change,” adding that “for many scientists, being told to turn away and ignore what is happening in the ecosystem we’ve dedicated our careers to is much worse.”
The department’s Antarctic division is planning to return people to Macquarie Island after the end of seal breeding season and the anticipated mass die-off, environmental officials said.
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