Avian Influenza and bird hunting

General

Avian Influenza can result in significant mortality of wild bird populations and also have consequences for commercial production of domestic poultry (including game-birds). It further constitutes a potential health risk for humans. The pattern of outbreaks of H5N1 in the EU and in some other European countries, as well as scientific publications on HPAI H5N1 in Asia, suggest that migratory birds are capable of transmitting the virus over long distances.

Should wild birds be culled?

There is a wide agreement between veterinary experts and international bodies on the fact that culling of birds would not lead to any effective control of the disease. FAO and OIE have clearly advised that in general control of AI in wild birds is not feasible and should not be attempted. Any suggestion that hunting be allowed to cull birds in outbreak areas has little scientific support, as it is likely to be counterproductive and may lead to greater dispersal of the problem. The indiscriminate killing of wild birds, especially as a precautionary measure to prevent the spread of AI, is neither advisable nor justifiable and could aggravate the situation by resulting in the dispersal of potentially infected birds. However, it cannot be ruled out that certain regulation measures might have to be taken in the case of a proven outbreak of AI in extremely limited cases following a proper assessment of the risk and benefit of such measures to be judged on a case by case basis.

Risks for hunters and hunting

Hunters are theoretically at risk from AI.

Firstly, they are handling freshly killed wild birds and are, therefore, theoretically at risk of becoming infected themselves - just as other categories of people being in close contact with domestic (poultry farmers) or wild birds (ringers). This risk should however not be exaggerated as wild bird-to-human transmission has so far not been demonstrated.

Should AI result in mass mortality of wild birds, the consequences would be far reaching for hunting. It would indeed make little sense to hunt birds – ducks or geese for instance – if the populations of these species have been severely reduced because of AI .

Hunters may also suffer from legal restrictions of hunting, or even bans, taken by the competent authorities as part of prevention programmes. Several precautionary and bio-security response measures, which have already been taken to deal with AI, have implications for hunting. These have included:

•  In areas of outbreaks where protection zones (3 km radius) and surveillance zones (10 km radius) there is a prohibition of bird hunting

•  In high risk areas, defined by the Member States, the use of live decoys for hunting is subject to very strict conditions or totally banned (with the exception of the use of such birds for the purpose of sampling surveillance work), even though there is no indication that such decoys play a role in virus transmission.

Hunting: part of the problem or part of the solution?

It has never been demonstrated that hunting contributes to spread the disease. There are anyway other human causes of “disturbance” and it would be an illusion to believe that without disturbance, wild birds will stay forever where they are. The reality is that birds, almost by definition, fly from one site to another, in function of available food, weather conditions or natural reproduction and migration patterns. Fact is that in 2006, all HPAI cases in wild birds in the EU were recorded outside the normal hunting season.

Hunting might on the other hand be a tool to regulate the presence of birds, for instance by keeping them away from highly sensitive areas with free-range poultry farms. It may also contribute to avoid local bird concentrations, where the risk of transmission between birds is much higher than when the density is lower.

Should hunting be completely banned, birds that would normally have been harvested by hunters will simply remain alive and may contribute to higher bird densities, hence increase the risk of transmission of the disease.

Hunters' organisations have an important task of informing and educating their members about the need to participate actively in surveillance for AI in wild birds, but also of making sure that bio-security measures taken by the authorities are justified and proportional. Hunters should be motivated to systematically report dead or sick birds to the authorities, without concern for unjustified hunting restrictions in their area if it turns out that these birds were infected with the H5N1 virus.

The European Commission recognises that hunters, with the knowledge of their local area, also play an important role in the overall monitoring and surveillance for AI, by providing samples of birds for testing for the virus as well as in alerting the authorities to any unusual incidents of mortality of birds. The 7 million hunters in Europe are indeed ideal “monitors” on the ground for the health status of wildlife – if hunting is banned without good arguments, this “thermometer” will be broken.