The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry said on 20 June that testing by CSIRO's Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness confirmed H5 high-pathogenicity avian influenza in a brown skua in Western Australia. Agriculture minister Julie Collins's release described it as the first detection in Australia of the highly pathogenic strain of concern that has been circulating globally.
Western Australia's government said the bird was found in the remote Cape Le Grand area, east of Esperance. ABC News reported that the skua was found on a remote beach in Cape Le Grand National Park, about 700 kilometres south-east of Perth, and that authorities were focused on preventing spread to the poultry industry. Officials urged the public to report dead or sick birds or marine mammals to the Emergency Animal Disease Hotline rather than handling carcasses.
The finding was not confined to a single confirmed bird for long. The federal agriculture department said samples from a sick giant petrel from the same region had returned a suspect positive result at the Western Australian government laboratory. Collins's release said samples from the giant petrel had also tested positive for H5 avian influenza at the state laboratory and would undergo confirmatory testing at CSIRO's Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness.
The immediate risk categories are different and should not be collapsed. For wild birds, the finding means Australia has joined a global outbreak that Wildlife Health Australia says has been spreading through wild-bird movement since 2021, with severe effects on some wildlife populations. For poultry, the key fact is what has not yet been found: officials have not reported infection in commercial flocks. For humans, the Australian Centre for Disease Control advice carried by the agriculture department says H5 bird flu remains a low public-health risk because it rarely affects people.
That is why the response is likely to look slow and technical rather than dramatic. Two positive or suspected-positive seabirds do not prove wider establishment in Australia, but they give surveillance teams a place to start. Sampling nearby birds and mammals, tracing reports from the public and keeping poultry premises alert are the tools that matter now.