Summit Metro Parks has publicly advised against hand-feeding birds and has halted the sale of bird feed at the F.A. Seiberling Nature Realm due to the rise of the highly infectious H5 strain of avian influenza, commonly referred to as bird flu.
Seiberling is a popular destination in Northeast Ohio for hand-feeding birds, especially chickadees.
The decision came from guidance from Summit County Public Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Lindsay Smith, chief of marketing and communications for Summit Metro Parks.
“We were able to make that decision quickly,” Smith said. “Because we do follow the guidance from Summit County Public Health when it comes to controlling these types of viruses. We were able to put out this information as soon as we got that guidance.”
The advisory applies to everyone, including Metro Parks employees, she said.
“That's not something that our staff typically will do on a day-to-day,” Smith said. “We don't typically have opportunities where we're working hand-to-hand with wild birds. But as a precaution, we won't have anyone on our team having that opportunity.”
The Akron Zoo announced that its birds were being moved to indoor facilities as a precautionary measure.
Ohio currently leads the country in cases with more than 7.35 million infected birds in the past 30 days, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Inspection Service.
While there is no evidence of human-to-human spread of avian influenza, the CDC reports there have been at least 67 cases reported in people, and one associated death in Louisiana.
