Ninety kākāpō, including new chicks, to be vaccinated against bird flu

The Kākāpō Recovery Programme is positive about the vaccination programme rolling out, as the deadly bird flu arrives on our shores.

A seabird found on Wellington's Petone Beach earlier this week tested positive for the virus on Wednesday.

The Department of Conservation (DOC) began vaccinating core breeding populations of kākāpō, takahe, kakī (black stilt), tuturuata (shore plover) and kākāriki karaka (orange-fronted parakeet), as the bird flu spread through Australia and after a successful trial of the vaccine was completed last year.

"It was a world first doing this in advance of the virus itself arriving in the country," DOC kākāpō vet Lydia Udstrom told Kākāpō Files II podcast host Alison Balance.

The vaccination programme for kākāpō is focused on Whenua Hou/Codfish Island, where there is a large overlap with petrels and seabirds.

"They're often the species that will carry this virus from place to place," said Udstrom, "They're actually all away at the moment, which is quite funny.

"The island's quite quiet compared to when all the seabirds are home, but it's a really good opportunity to get in and get the kākāpō vaccinated in advance, so they've got some protection when those birds start coming back, if any of them do happen to come back sick."

She said they only planned to vaccinate the kākāpō that would stay on the island.

"Between breeding seasons, we'll often transfer birds and move birds around, so that for the next breeding season, they're in the best possible location for breeding.

"We're just focusing on the ones that are going to stay long term on Whenua Hou... looking like about 70 birds that we're going to vaccinate out here."

DOC also planned to leave a few of the endangered birds unvaccinated.

"That's just to give us some understanding if they were naturally exposed, we'd be able to take a blood sample from them and detect that they were naturally exposed, but were alright.

"There is the possibility that someone might succumb to the disease and that would be really sad to learn, but would also be really important information to know, because they're wild birds, they need to be in the wild and doing wild things, but we can protect the really critical breeding birds using this vaccine."

DOC is also vaccinating about 20 kākāpō on Pukunui/Anchor Island, although with less of an overlap with seabirds, Udstrom believed there's lower risk to that community of birds.

"If we did have any birds that ended up sick with avian influenza, then we could scale up and we'd look to vaccinate more," she said.

On Whenua Hou the founder birds, those original birds from Stewart Island, would all be vaccinated, except for Rangi, because he is a prolific breeder and had lots of offspring that would likely be captured by the vaccination programme anyway.

A few of the chicks from this breeding season would also be vaccinated.

The vaccination involved two injections.

"We give them an initial vaccine that the body responds to and starts to produce antibodies too, and then 3-5 weeks later, we give them a second dose, and that's what generates kind of the higher levels of antibodies and the longer term antibodies."

"The really interesting thing is we can learn from the birds that participated in the vaccine trial. We've still got eight of them out here on Whenua Hou and it's been about two years since they've been vaccinated.

"By giving them a booster now, it's going to allow us to repeat the blood testing and get a bit of an idea as to how quickly they generate those antibodies."

DOC anticipated a massive deadly first wave and then some natural immunity, as the virus became a bit endemic in the population.

"It's looking at can we protect these really critical breeding populations for these species through that first wave and through that really initial severe impact?

"Then, over time, they're going to have to be able to adapt and respond to the infection, because once this virus is here, we're never going to be able to get rid of it. It will be here forever."

So far, it's been the biggest kākāpō breeding season on record.

The first chick born this year has officially reached 150 days and could be added to the kākāpō population tally, taking it up to 236, the first population increase in four years.

DOC ranger Louise Porter told the KFII Podcast that the living chick count was currently at 90 chicks.

"For context, it took 16 years from the start of the kākāpō recovery programme to produce 90 chicks," she said. "This year, we've done that in one breeding season."

What about poultry?

The president of Wairarapa's Poultry and Pigeon Club wants bird flu vaccinations opened up to birds other than natives.

Melvin Pike, who owns about 200 birds, was concerned about the impact bird flu could have rare poultry breeds.

He said there weren't many breeders for rare poultry and losses would be heavily felt, so it was critical to protect as many birds as possible.

MPI said vaccination in poultry was not uniformly used against bird flu, but it would continue to consider it.

Chief veterinary officer, Dr Mary van Andel, said if vaccination was permitted in commercial poultry, trade would stop in some markets unless countries agreed to goods from a country that allowed vaccination for H5 bird flu.

She said broiler chickens raised for meat did not live long enough for immunity to fully develop before slaughter.

Dr van Andel said vaccinated birds could also mask the virus, making it difficult to distinguish them from infected ones using standard diagnostic tests.

Find all the details about vaccinating kākāpō and this year's breeding season on the Kākāpō Files II podcast.