Bird flu kills 30% of Alderney's Northern Gannets

In a grim revelation, Alderney Wildlife Trust (AWT) has announced that an estimated 30% of the island's Northern Gannet population has succumbed to bird flu.

The charity believes the population has "not recovered" from an outbreak in 2022, which killed hundreds of the birds.

AWT initially thought the remaining gannets would recolonise the islands in 2023, but AWT's Paul Belben said the slow speed of recovery was not a complete surprise.

Alderney's Northern Gannet population has been decimated by bird flu (Tony Davison).

Important population lost

The colonies represented more than 1% of the global population, with about 6,000 pairs on Les Etacs and 2,700 on Ortac.

Mr Belben said the exact number of birds lost still needed to be calculated.

"We're going to do a full release on the census count for 2023 in the coming weeks however numbers appear to have not recovered following avian bird flu. We wouldn't have expected the numbers to recover in a year so these figures aren't a surprise," he said.

A webcam to view the gannets has been available on the AWT website since the end of February.