Australia is facing a new biosecurity challenge after the detection of the highly pathogenic H5 bird flu strain in migratory seabirds. The discovery ends years of Australia being one of the few major regions without the global H5N1 impact, which has spread widely among birds and some mammals.

The H5N1 strain has been confirmed in a northern giant petrel, near where the virus was first detected in Western Australia.

The H5N1 variant of the virus was confirmed in a sick brown skua found on a remote beach near Esperance in Western Australia, about 700km southeast of Perth.