Posted: Jul. 31, 2022 10:05AM

CHEK

Atlantic puffins are seen on Machias Seal Island on Friday, June 24, 2016. The island is located in the lower Bay of Fundy, approximately 15 kilometres west of Grand Manan Island. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

A celebrated annual initiative in Newfoundland to rescue lost baby puffins has been suspended after hundreds of dead seabirds have washed up along the island’s shores.

The local Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s puffin and petrel patrols in Witless Bay bring hundreds of eager volunteers from all over the province and the country to help scoop up the disoriented little birds from the town’s roadways. But with the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu making its way through Newfoundland’s wild seabird population, Suzanne Dooley, the organization’s conservation director, said it was just too risky to run the program…