Finding Winged Travelers and Ourselves in Troubled Waters

<p>Aswe observe World Migratory Bird Day in 2023, the chosen theme &mdash; water &mdash; ripples with profound significance. Water, in its various forms, serves as both a barrier and a facilitator in birds&rsquo; extraordinary travels. Oceans, rivers, lakes, and wetlands are indispensable waypoints for these resilient travelers. But in helping to shape birds&rsquo; migratory routes, water also helps to create aerial superhighways for opportunistic, hitchhiking pathogens to travel the globe.</p> <p>Historically these hitchhikers were predominantly low pathogenic avian influenza viruses, meaning they did not cause high mortality in wild birds. Then about two years ago, a highly pathogenic lineage of avian influenza took advantage of the flyways and became an unprecedented global pandemic. Likely&nbsp;<a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.02.539182v1.full.pdf" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">millions of wild birds</a>&nbsp;have been killed worldwide and the breadth of species impacts have been astounding:</p> <p><a href="https://medium.com/one-planet-one-health-one-future/finding-winged-travelers-and-ourselves-in-troubled-waters-4dc7152ac94d"><strong>Read More</strong></a></p>