The moment scientists feared arrived late last year, when H5N1, or bird flu, was first found in the Antarctic. Last week, a king penguin on the island of South Georgia became the first in the region to be thought to have died from the disease. The Guardian’s biodiversity reporter Phoebe Weston tells Ian Sample why researchers have said the spread of bird flu through Antarctica’s penguin colonies could signal ‘one of the greatest ecological disasters of modern times’.
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