‘We expected it, but now it’s here’: on the frontline of Australia’s bird flu outbreak, people are distressed

As Australia prepares for the H5 bird flu to potentially rip through hundreds of species, residents of the Limestone Coast are already seeing the impacts Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast It’s only been three weeks since H5 bird flu was detected on South Australia’s Limestone Coast, and already encounters with sick or dead birds are becoming commonplace. Maureen Christie, who lives in the seaside town of Carpenter Rocks, has been observing and protecting birds in the region for decades. She is now witnessing many stricken and suffering. “It’s just awful,” Christie said, who helped establish the Friends of Shorebirds SE more than 20 years ago. “We expected it, but now it’s here, it’s just traumatic.” The state’s south-east is renowned for its bird life, she said, which includes resident hooded plovers and oyster catchers, along with fly-ins from other countries, such as double-banded plovers, red-necked stints, sanderlings and ruddy turnstones. The situation has escalated considerably over the past week.

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Scoop News DeskAustralia · Published Thursday, August 6, 2026 at 3:00 PM UTCUpdated Thursday, August 6, 2026 at 3:21 PM UTC

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As the federal environment minister, Murray Watt, observed on Monday , the events rapidly unfolding in the south-east, and around Australia, are “the beginning of what is likely to be a long, difficult journey in terms of the impacts on wildlife.” In Victoria , the chief veterinary officer, Dr Graeme Cooke, said recent aerial and ground surveillance near Portland and Nelson has already shown “a clear increase in the number of dead terns along that part of the coast”, consistent with deaths in South Australia. “Last week we talked about individual detections; the first cases of the H5 bird flu in Victoria.