Friday Grey Matters: Strange Disease Targeting Rare Captive Parrot

This doesn't sound like the notorious Bird Flu, but an endangered species of parrot (Tasmania's orange-bellied parrot) are mysteriously dying of a unknown disease....possibly a herpes virus.

Birds at the Environment Department's breeding center near Hobart have been quarantined since January, when 46 young birds were killed by the disease.

Months of testing, in Australia and overseas, has not pinned down the cause.

Mark Holdsworth from the Parrot Recovery Program says the wild population does not appear to be affected.

"Wild population appears to be stable and we didn't detect any decline in the nestlings produced," he said.

"But before we can release birds from Taroona into the wild population we need to determine if this potential disease, which we believe may be a type of herpes virus, is in this population.

"It may in fact be that this disease is a native disease to orange-bellied parrots and we've just discovered it through captive breeding."

Its strange to me that only the captive population, rather than the wild population, would be targeted. It suggests that the captive population has been selectively exposed to the virus, perhaps through a handler or other captive bird species. The orange-bellied parrot is listed as critically endangered, and the current population is listed at about 180---therefore a loss of 48 birds is quite devastating.

As a side note, according to the Wiki entry on these parrots, the Woolnorth wind farm on Tasmania's coast has a license to kill up to 6 of these birds every 2 years. I previously blogged about this wind farm, which was nearly scrapped due to the harm it may do to the parrot population. Luckily, to date, none of these parrots have been killed by the windmills.