20 August 2026

Ministry for Primary Industries Official Information Act Request No. OIA26-0675

Department of Conservation Official Information Act Request No. OIAD-9589

What is happening?

DOC has begun a programme to vaccinate approximately 300 core breeding birds from some of New Zealand's most threatened native species against H5N1 avian influenza. These include kākāpō, takahē, tūturuatu/shore plover, kakī/black stilt and kākāriki karaka/orange-fronted parakeet. This is a significant intervention because these are small, endangered populations and some of the birds are extremely important to the survival of their species.

Why are we asking questions?

DOC publicly described its 2024–2025 vaccination trial as showing that vaccination was 'safe and effective' and would help protect these birds from H5N1. But the trial did not expose vaccinated birds to H5N1. It measured antibody responses as a proxy for expected protection, and the trial report itself stated that overall efficacy would not be known until natural exposure occurred.

The vaccine being used now is not the vaccine that was trialled.

The threatened-bird trial used an H5N3 vaccine, Poulvac Flufend (A009733). The approximately 300 birds in the 2026 programme are instead to receive a different H5N2 vaccine (A012218). The earlier threatened-species trial therefore cannot itself establish the safety or efficacy of the product now being administered to these birds.

‘Highly pathogenic’ does not mean every infected species will suffer high mortality.

Pathogenicity concerns the capacity of a virus to cause disease. Different bird species can experience very different disease severity and mortality. The important conservation question is therefore not simply whether H5N1 is classified as HPAI, but what evidence shows that each of these endangered species faces a sufficiently serious risk of disease, death or population decline to justify intervention.

What triggered vaccination?

DOC has described the detection of H5N1 in migratory seabirds in Australia as a “trigger to start vaccinating” endangered New Zealand birds. But neither MPI's One Health document nor the related Cabinet paper identifies a published threshold for moving from preparedness into vaccination. The unanswered question is: what risk-benefit assessment showed that this trigger justified vaccinating these particular populations?

Vaccination itself is not risk-free.

These birds must be captured, restrained and injected, potentially repeatedly if boosters are required. Some free-living birds may then be difficult to recapture and monitor. The risk calculation therefore has two sides: the risk posed by H5N1 to each species versus the known and uncertain risks associated with intervention.

There are important unanswered questions about the original trial.

The published material does not provide the complete underlying numbers showing how many birds of each species were actually vaccinated, subsequently tested and followed over time. H5N1-specific HI testing was undertaken only in takahē, and chicken-derived thresholds were used to infer expected protection.

What are we asking DOC and MPI to disclose?

The OIA requests seek the underlying trial data; deaths, adverse events and longer-term outcomes; species-specific evidence of H5N1 risk; the scientific basis for extrapolating antibody responses to protection; the evidence supporting use of the different H5N2 vaccine; the expected booster regime; and the records showing who decided to proceed, according to what criteria, and how the programme was funded. MPI's own documentation for the H5N2 product says “Full efficacy and potency data is pending” and “Duration of immunity is not established.”

The central message:

This is not an argument against protecting endangered birds or against vaccination in principle. It is an argument for getting the risk assessment right. When an intervention involves core breeding animals from critically endangered species, the evidence supporting both the expected benefit and the risks of intervention should be transparent, species-specific and available for independent scrutiny before further intervention occurs.

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H5N1 VACCINATION OF ENDANGERED NATIVE BIRDS

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