The H5 bird flu has taken 30 years to reach Australia. Emerging from the crowded cities and farms of southern China, it recently reached the crowded colonies of seals and seabirds on remote specks of land in the Southern Ocean.

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After killing three-quarters of the elephant seal pups on Heard Island, an Australian world heritage territory, the virus has now jumped more than 4000 kilometres to the mainland.

On its journey to Australia, it has wiped out uncounted millions of wild birds and tens of thousands of mammals.

For some species, recovery will take decades or not at all. Having already affected some 600 bird species and 100 mammal species around the world, it has now arrived in a land rich in new, immunologically naive hosts.

This globe-trotting, shape-shifting microscopic killer is an unstoppable threat to Australian wildlife. A mere 10 proteins and eight RNA segments encapsulated in a lipid membrane, it takes over a host's cellular processes to churn out millions of copies of itself, ceaselessly mutating and swapping genetic segments to create new immune-evading variants.

When heartbreaking images of dead Australian birds and mammals strewn across beaches and wetlands flash across our screens, Australians will demand our governments do more than monitor the losses.

Once established in the wild, the virus cannot be eliminated or treated in wildlife. So, what can be done?

The Australian government invests heavily in building the resilience of........

© The Examiner