For the first time in 30 years, the Eagle Watch feeding program in Sheffield Mills, N.S., has been suspended due to an avian influenza outbreak at a commercial poultry farm in western Nova Scotia.
“I got a phone call from one of the farmers who is in the program. He basically said because there was an outbreak of avian influenza in the Annapolis Valley,” said Malcolm Lake, secretary with the Sheffield Mills Community Association who runs the Eagle Watch program.
“The farms were basically going to go into a lockdown mode where only essential people would be allowed on the property.”
Last month, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) confirmed a Canada goose in the Grand Desert, N.S., area of the Halifax Regional Municipality tested positive for avian influenza or H5N1.
Then, a reported outbreak at a commercial farm in western Nova Scotia resulted in the culling of 12,000 turkeys earlier this month.
The CFIA has confirmed so far, there are no new cases of avian influenza being reported in Nova Scotia.
“Things could have gotten a lot worse,” said Sylvain Charlebois, director of Dalhousie University's Agri-Food Analytics Lab. “These outbreaks will spread like wildfire. The avian flu is kind of the Omicron for birds, and the only way to get rid of it is to cull animals.”
Lake says he usually feeds the eagles twice a day from Dec. 20, until early April at a farmer’s field at the corner of Bains Road and Middle Dyke Road in Sheffield Mills.
Lake says he normally picks up the chicken carcasses from poultry farms in the area and tosses them into the field for the eagles. But the feeding program will be on hiatus until the tight boundary restrictions are lifted from poultry farms in the area.
The CFIA confirmed Tuesday there were no new cases of H5N1.
“So, if that holds true for another couple of weeks, it may be that they’ll lift the alert and if they did, I would hope to get back into feeding the eagles,” said Lake. “But I’m prepared to say it might be done for 2022.”
Avian influenza poses little risk to humans, but is highly contagious and deadly in commercial and wild bird populations, says Charlebois. He credits the turkey farmer for alerting the inspection agency immediately, saying it may have saved the spread to other farms.
"We actually have seen in the past, farmers trying to limit the impact of an outbreak on their own and that’s the worst thing you want to do,” said Charlebois.
With the feeding program on hold, it’s not the mature eagles that Lake is concerned about, but the young ones. The Eagle Watch program started in the late 1980s as a step to help a declining eagle population.
“I’m more concerned about the juveniles. As the government told us years ago, they have more trouble getting through the winter than the adults,” said Lake.
The CFIA confirmed three cases of H5N1 in Nova Scotia, which includes a wild goose in Grand Desert, a case in and a backyard flock in eastern Nova Scotia, and the commercial turkey farm in western Nova Scotia.
