Australia races to shield little penguins from H5N1 bird flu

Australian wildlife workers have launched an unprecedented effort to vaccinate wild populations of little penguins against the highly contagious H5N1 avian influenza.

Hundreds of thousands of tourists a year flock to viewing areas and boardwalks to watch the diminutive sea birds waddle ashore and along the beach in the evenings on the eastern coast's Phillip Island. Now, like the rest of Australia's wild bird population, they face the threat of H5N1, which breached the continental landmass for the first time in June and has since started to spread in local wildlife.

The virus was detected this month in a Phillip Island penguin that had died, the first infection in the colony by a pathogen that has caused severe disease and death in birds worldwide.