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