Harrowing stories about the impact of the bird flu epidemic in Scotland have been revealed in a shocking new documentary.
The Eòrpa programme, airing on BBC Alba, spoke to wildlife chiefs, vets and farmers to uncover the scale of the crisis, from North Berwick’s Bass Rock up to the Western Isles.
Experts told how thousands of dead birds have washed up on Scots shores amid unprecedented waves of avian influenza in recent months.
Susan Davis, boss of the Scottish Seabird Centre in North Berwick, East Lothian, said: “We saw the most significant impact on the Bass Rock, the world’s largest northern gannet colony.
“We have over 150,000 individuals on that island, and so you know it is of international importance.
“When avian flu hit initially we saw a lot of washed up birds along the coastline and that was really the first sign that the disease had hit the island.”
And Shona Maclellan of the RSPB, based in theWestern Isles, told Eòrpa of her worries a whole generation of birds could be lost - particularly wild geese.
She said: “We’re very concerned now with how the numbers keep rising. Over 1000 dead birds have already been found here over the winter - and this doesn’t include what happened over the summer.
“And it’s all over the country, we’re talking about Scotland as a whole, not just the islands. “With the Western Isles anyway, we’ve not been suffering as much as Shetland and Orkney and places like that.
“But we are worried, because with seabirds, the way it affects them, especially the gannet, it takes them five years before they breed again.”
Meanwhile, Billy Robb, who runs Chalmerston Farm in Mauchline, Ayrshire, recounted how the deadly virus had spread to his livestock, revealing he had to cull 32,000 hens.
He said: “That's about three and a half months of lost income from those birds. But we still have all the bills to pay.
“We don't have the feed bill but we have labour costs, finance cost. I'm still having to pay for these sheds that I borrowed a lot of money to build and put birds in.”
The UK experienced its largest ever bird flu outbreak last year, which has ravaged Scots coastal bird populations like great skuas, gannets and gulls.
We told last month of scientists’ fears that the epidemic - which has killed 97million birds worldwide - could eventually adapt to spread among humans.
The BBC Alba documentary, presented by reporter Andrew MacKinnon, spoke to other workers and conservation groups on the frontline in the fight against bird flu.
Eòrpa aired on BBC Alba at 8.30pm on Thursday and will be available on BBC iPlayer for the next 11 months.
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