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The original was posted on /r/worldnews by /u/streetcredinfinite on 2024-01-03 01:57:40.
Polar bear dies from bird flu as H5N1 spreads across globe
Submitted 2 years ago by bot@lemmit.online [bot] to worldnews@lemmit.online
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/02/polar-bear-dies-from-bird-flu-age-of-extinction
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 2 years ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A polar bear has been killed by bird flu as the highly contagious H5N1 virus spreads into the most remote parts of the planet.
The current outbreak of the highly infectious variant of H5N1 – which started in 2021 – is estimated to have killed millions of wild birds.
“It’s been in Antarctica and now it’s in the high Arctic in mammals – it’s horrifying,” Diana Bell, emeritus professor of conservation biology at the University of East Anglia, told the Guardian.
Scientists have warned that the highly contagious virus could bring “one of the largest ecological disasters of modern times” if it reaches the remote penguin populations.
Dewar was one of the authors of a risk assessment which found many Antarctic animals were threatened, including gulls, skuas, fur seals and sea lions.
Ecosystems in polar regions are particularly vulnerable to bird flu because they contain many animals found nowhere else in the world which have never been exposed to similar viruses.
The original article contains 583 words, the summary contains 161 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!