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Will Wallace’s Line save Australia from avian influenza?

McCallum, Hamish I., Roshier, David A., Tracey, John P., Joseph, Leo and Heinsohn, Robert 2008, Will Wallace’s Line save Australia from avian influenza?, Ecology and society, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 1-17.


Title Will Wallace’s Line save Australia from avian influenza?
Author(s) McCallum, Hamish I.
Roshier, David A.
Tracey, John P.
Joseph, Leo
Heinsohn, Robert
Journal name Ecology and society
Volume number 13
Issue number 2
Start page 1
End page 17
Publisher Resilience Alliance
Place of publication Ottawa, Ont.
Publication date 2008-12
ISSN 1708-3087
Keyword(s) avian influenza
Australia
bird migration
risk mapping
Summary Australia is separated from the Asian faunal realm by Wallace's Line, across which there is relatively little avian migration. Although this does diminish the risk of high pathogenicity avian influenza of Asian origin arriving with migratory birds, the barrier is not complete. Migratory shorebirds, as well as a few landbirds, move through the region on annual migrations to and from Southeast Asia and destinations further north, although the frequency of infection of avian influenza in these groups is low. Nonetheless,high pathogenicity H5N1 has recently been recorded on the island of New Guinea in West Papua in domestic poultry. This event increases interest in the movements of birds between Wallacea in eastern Indonesia, New Guinea, and Australia, particularly by waterbirds. There are frequent but irregular movements of ducks, geese, and other waterbirds across Torres Strait between New Guinea and Australia, including movements to regions in which H5N1 has occurred in the recent past. Although the likelihood of avian influenza entering Australia via an avian vector is presumed to be low, the nature and extent of bird movements in this region is poorly known. There have been five recorded outbreaks of high pathogenicityavian influenza in Australian poultry flocks, all of the H7 subtype. To date, Australia is the only inhabited continent not to have recorded high pathogenicity avian influenza since 1997, and H5N1 has never been recorded. The ability to map risk from high pathogenicity avian influenza to Australia is hampered by the lack of quantitative data on the extent of bird movements between Australia and its northern neighbors.Recently developed techniques offer the promise to fill this knowledge gap.
Language eng
Field of Research 050299 Environmental Science and Management not elsewhere classified
HERDC Research category C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal
ERA Research output type C Journal article
Copyright notice ©2008, The author(s)
Persistent URL http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30022006

Document type: Journal Article
Collection: School of Life and Environmental Sciences
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Created: Mon, 18 Jan 2010, 11:03:09 EST