AE 1432 - 5-Minute News: Why Is Australia Vaccinating 5,000 Penguins?

معنی واژه با لمس

1. 0:03G'day guys, Pete here from Walsey English.
2. 0:05Welcome to this first episode of 5 Minute News.
3. 0:08So the goal here is to cover a recent news story in around 5 minutes, okay?
4. 0:13So let's get into it.
5. 0:19I've got a question for you today.
6. 0:21How do you vaccinate more than 5,000 wild penguins?
7. 0:26Think about it for a second.
8. 0:28These aren't penguins living in a zoo, they're completely wild animals.
9. 0:32So first you gotta find them, then you gotta catch them, then you gotta vaccinate 'em.
10. 0:37Sounds difficult enough, right?
11. 0:39Well, there's another problem.
12. 0:42You gotta do it twice.
13. 0:44Each penguin needs two doses of the vaccine, so somehow wildlife teams need to find and catch the same birds again.
14. 0:53Why would Australia attempt something this difficult?
15. 0:56Because H five N one bird flu is now circulating or spreading among wild birds in Australia, and authorities are worried about what could happen to vulnerable native species, animals that could be badly affected by this virus.
16. 1:11Including one very small Australian bird, the little penguin.
17. 1:16And yep, that's actually the name of the species.
18. 1:19They're the smallest penguins in the world, and Phillip Island near Melbourne is home to around forty thousand of them, the largest little penguin colony anywhere in the world.
19. 1:30Forty thousand penguins living relatively close together creates an obvious problem when you're dealing with a contagious disease.
20. 1:38When lots of birds gather in a colony, a virus has plenty of opportunities to spread.
21. 1:44But the penguins also have another behavior that gives wildlife teams an unusual advantage.
22. 1:51Little penguins regularly come back to their colonies on land.
23. 1:56Many return to familiar parts of the colony, often including the same burrows.
24. 2:01So wildlife teams have a pretty good idea where they'll come back.
25. 2:06They can catch a penguin as it returns, give it its first dose, microchip it so the individual bird can be identified later, and release it.
26. 2:16Then comes the tricky part.
27. 2:18Waiting for that penguin to come back and trying to catch it again for dose number two.
28. 2:24And while authorities were preparing to do all of this, the situation changed.
29. 2:29On the 12th of August, Victoria announced the plan to vaccinate more than 5,000 little penguins at Phillip Island and St Kilda.
30. 2:38At that point, H5 bird flu hadn't been detected in any little penguins in Australia.
31. 2:44Three days later, a dead little penguin from Phillip Island tested positive to H5N1.
32. 2:51It was the first confirmed detection in the island's little penguin colony.
33. 2:56Now that didn't mean that thousands of Phillip Island penguins were suddenly infected, but it confirmed exactly what the authorities had been preparing for.
34. 3:06The virus had reached the colony.
35. 3:09And a few days later, on the seventeenth of August, the vaccination program began.
36. 3:15So why are authorities taking this threat so seriously?
37. 3:19Before the outbreak, researchers used computer models to look at what could happen if H5N1 spread badly through Phillip Island's 40,000 penguins.
38. 3:29In their worst case scenario, basically what could happen if things went particularly badly, they estimated that between 8,000 and 16,000 penguins could potentially die.
39. 3:41That's not a prediction.
40. 3:43Nobody is saying 16,000 penguins will die.
41. 3:46But it shows why authorities are trying to act before they know exactly how serious the outbreak will become.
42. 3:53And vaccination isn't a magic solution either.
43. 3:56It won't stop H5 bird flu from circulating.
44. 3:59Instead, the goal is to limit how much damage the virus causes and give the penguins another layer of protection.
45. 4:07Meanwhile, wildlife teams will continue testing birds, monitoring the colony, and watching for further spread.
46. 4:15The big question now is whether all of this will be enough to protect the colony if the virus spreads more widely.
47. 4:22We simply don't know yet.
48. 4:24But over the coming weeks, wildlife teams in Victoria are attempting something pretty remarkable.
49. 4:30They're trying to protect thousands of completely wild penguins from a dangerous virus.
50. 4:35And to do it, they'll need to find many of those same little penguins not once, but twice.
51. 4:43Before we finish, one useful expression from today's story is worst case scenario.
52. 4:49A worst case scenario is the worst thing that could reasonably happen in a situation.
53. 4:55For example, worst case scenario, we miss our flight and have to stay another night.
54. 5:01So remember, a worst case scenario isn't what will happen, it's what could happen if things go particularly badly.