Macquarie Island base to evacuate over bird flu fears

Australia will evacuate 24 workers from its Macquarie Island research station because of wellbeing concerns linked to a possible H5N1 bird flu outbreak among elephant seals, officials said Friday.

Macquarie Island lies between Tasmania and the Antarctic and hosts an Australian research station as well as thousands of elephant seals. The environment ministry said the station's tradespeople, scientists and support staff would leave on the RSV Nuyina icebreaker in September or early October.

Sean Sullivan, deputy secretary at Australia's Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, said the risk to humans from H5 bird flu was considered low, but officials could not ignore the psychosocial risks of living near potentially large numbers of affected animals.

No cases have been detected on Macquarie Island. Officials said many elephant seals were expected to die during the September-to-November breeding season if the virus reaches the island.

Australian officials reported in June that thousands of elephant seal pups had died of bird flu on the remote Heard and McDonald Islands. As of Friday, authorities had reported 341 confirmed or presumed positive H5 bird flu cases in Australia, with no cases detected in poultry or in agricultural production.