20 Big Cats at a Washington State Sanctuary Die of Bird Flu
Two cougars infected with bird flu die on the Olympic Peninsula.
We have been covering the outbreak of the bird flu for over 2 years.
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI or H5N1) is a severe and contagious viral disease that affects both domestic and wild birds. I recently reported that California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an emergency declaration on the state due to a critical case involving an elderly patient with preexisting conditions. This is despite it causing traditional flu-like symptoms in cows, and very minor symptoms like pink eye in humans (with no signs of human-to-human transmission).
However, other animals have not had such limited effects when infected. For example, over 17,000 southern elephant seal pups were found dead on Argentina’s Valdés Peninsula due to HPAI.
Now there is a disturbing report from Washington State that 20 big cats, including a half-Bengal tiger and four cougars, died after being infected by H5N1.
“We’ve never had anything like it; they usually die basically of old age,” said Mark Mathews, the founder and director of the Wild Felid Advocacy Center in Shelton, Wash. “Not something like this, it’s a pretty wicked virus.”
Three other cats had recovered from the virus, and one remained in critical condition on Tuesday, he said.
The sanctuary said in a statement on Friday that the facility was under quarantine and would be closed until further notice while the habitats were sanitized.
The virus began to present itself in November within the cougar population, with several cats developing pneumonialike symptoms. Within days, other species began to show signs of illness.
It appears the disease stuck these cats hard.
The people who run this sanctuary here on Harstine Island say the death of the cats feels like a death in the family.
Now, they are trying to figure out how the cats caught the viral infection, and how to keep those remaining safe.
“They’re drowning, basically, in their own lungs,” said Melinda Mathews.
Melinda Mathews lives here full-time with her husband, Mark, who founded the nonprofit in 2006.
“They were immensely suffering,” Melinda said, her face drawn in sadness. “It was the hardest thing, so hard.”
The state’s wildlife department is also reporting that two wild mountain lions on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula have died of the bird flu.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and Panthera, a global wild cat conservation organization, confirmed the deaths on December 19.
One of the cats, a young male tracked with a collar, was found lifeless after his tracking signal showed no movement for hours.
The second, an uncollared male spotted by a resident near Blyn in Clallam County, was so weak and emaciated that it couldn’t jump a three-strand wire fence—an uncharacteristic struggle for a species known for its powerful agility.
“I watched it twice go up to the electric cow fence and get shocked and barely respond,” an individual who witnessed the trapped animal said in a statement. “It also walked up and rested several times within 30-40 feet from me and did not react to my voice.”
The mountain lions, also often referred to as cougars or pumas, are the first documented cases of bird flu in mountain lions in Washington, though similar incidents have been reported in other states.
The cats appear to have become infected after eating animals infected with the virus. But one of the local vets stress that there is no indication that the virus is becoming more adaptive.
This is the first known time that cougars have been killed by the bird flu in the state, WDFW veterinarian Katherine Haman said.
Despite serving as further evidence that the virus can infect mammals, Haman said this should not be cause for additional concern about human infections. Without more testing, she said this is not any indication of whether the virus is becoming more adaptive.
“What it does tell us is that the virus is still very much on the landscape,” Haman said.
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Comments
It solves the outdoor cat problem.
I don’t believe anything that they publish about any of the so-called flus. Let’s just call it flu scare p0rn.
If the big cats did die of it, it would have been inflected on them by the so-called health agencies. A sad state of affairs. The same goes for all of the animals that die from it.
Yeah, very weird article. Bird flu is in birds and has to mutate to jump species. If it did jump species to cats, that’s still not humans and this virus wouldn’t be infectious to humans. So it comes across as trying to work up hysteria.
I doubt very much the sanctuary owners had anything to do with this
Horrible
What if any immunizations or other immune altering drugs did the big cats receive?
I’m not terribly informed about immunology in large felines, but if they’ve got a couple of cougars that have survived the virus, aren’t those cats loaded with antibodies for it? And couldn’t a (perhaps crude and unreliable) vaccine be developed from the blood of the cats that survived?
Just curious if anybody surfing this blog knows a good (i.e., informed) answer.
Henceforth, we shall refer to this “bird flu” as “Tweety’s Revenge.”
Look, it is very hard to react to news items that could be completely wrong.
Let me say this about the h5n1 virus known as the bird flu, don’t let the word flu lull you into a sense of complacency. You don’t want to get it, it can kill you and if it doesn’t kill you it can leave permanent lung impairment. For those of you who don’t know Immunology or virus infective biology, this virus does have incredibly strong affinity to lung cells.
One of the main reasons covid became something to not worry about too much is it lost its affinity for lung cells that was present in the first two major variants of the virus, called The Wild type variant and the Delta variant. Post Delta when we went to Omicron, the Affinity really was for upper respiratory infection, rather than lower respiratory tract meaning lung tissue. Of course the other reason it became less worrisome is we started getting population wide levels of various degrees of immunity
Anything that avidly infects the lower respiratory tract meaning the lung cells where you exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide is really bad. If in fact the avian flu jumps to humans, and affinity and high infectivity of lung tissue, that will be really bad. And yes we can create a vaccine to it. And now it does not have to be an RNA vaccine, it can be a traditional vaccine.
The coronavirus vaccine became crappy because coronavirus changed so fast and because the vaccine was tailored to a very narrow portion of the vaccine that was highly mutable. It didn’t mean that the idea of vaccination, particularly in the early stages Where the wild type virus was infecting people’s lungs and killing them, is a bad idea.
Totally understandable that nobody believes anything that Health authorities are saying after their horrible communication, management, and lying about covid.
Correction above
the vaccine was tailored to a very narrow portion of the “virus”
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