KNBA | By Alena Naiden

Published June 16, 2026 at 11:19 AM AKDT

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• Anaktuvuk Pass residents get long-sought permission to use ATVs to hunt in the Gates of the Arctic

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Marc John Morry has been hunting caribou around Anaktuvuk Pass since he was a child. But in the summer and fall, most of the land around the village has been off-limits to hunters like him.

That’s because residents were not allowed to use four-wheelers in the majority of the roadless Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, which surrounds the village. But last month, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced it would restore off-road-vehicle access to the park for subsistence.

Residents have been advocating for that change for decades..

“This is life changing,” Morry said. “Now that we’re able to access the lands, we can learn ourselves and relearn what our ancestors taught us about certain areas that always have caribou.”

The Trump administration has been working to give hunters using off-road vehicles more access to protected federal lands across the country. However, the National Park Service officials said this action is specific to subsistence hunting in Gates of the Arctic and does not apply to sport hunters.

And it comes after decades of back and forth on the issue.

Before Anaktuvuk Pass became a permanent settlement about 80 years ago, the Nunamiut people were semi-nomadic and moved throughout the Brooks Range in search of caribou, their main food source.

“We heard many stories from our elders about hunting grounds that we weren’t able to access, which they remember before we even formed a community,” Morry said.

The federal government established the Gates of the Arctic around Anaktuvuk Pass when it passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. The law allowed subsistence hunting by residents using snowmachines, motorboats and other traditional transportation methods, but it didn’t mention ATVs.

Then, in 1986, the park interpreted the law to ban hunts on ATVs because they were not used traditionally. Lillian Stone, the city mayor of Anaktuvuk Pass, said the ban created invisible boundaries for residents relying on hunting for survival.

“It was like we were prisoners in our own land for 40 years, where before that it was — we could hunt anywhere, we could travel anywhere,” Stone said.

Susan Mekiana-Morry, the city vice mayor, said the ban didn’t just affect food gathering. Residents also couldn’t use the land to gather animal skins for making traditional clothing, tools and masks.

“We were deprived of our way of life, our culture, our heritage,” she said.

In the decades since, residents and local leaders have been advocating for ATV access to the park for subsistence — but without progress.

“We felt like it wasn’t getting anywhere, and we weren’t getting the answers that were needed,” Stone said.

Local Native corporations exchanged lands with the Park Service in the late 90s, making about 125,000 acres within the park available for subsistence ATV hunts, National Park Service spokesman for the Alaska region Scott Claggett said. Still, access remained limited.

“The people of Anaktuvuk Pass were limited to just 1% of the park’s 8.45 million acres for subsistence purposes,” Claggett wrote in an email. “Secretary Burgum’s decision last month vastly expands subsistence hunting access to indigenous peoples.”

A year after local leadership traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with the Interior Department, Interior Sec. Doug Burgum visited the village in May to announce the decision to restore ATV access to the park.

“No one knows or cares for this land more than the people who live here,” Burgum wrote in a social media post.

Claggett said that in the next six months, the Park Service will consult local communities to establish the new rule and consider any necessary protections for vegetation, cultural sites and wildlife.He said local subsistence hunters should contact the Gates of the Arctic for current information on using ATVs while the regulatory process is underway.

For Kristen Morry, an Anaktuvuk Pass hunter and a mother of two, the announcement means that she will be able to teach her children how to hunt and process the meat to continue the Nunamiut traditions.

“I have no words for what just happened, because it just makes me really emotional,” she said. “I’m excited to be out there and to no longer have to worry about when we have to stop, because I’m out there year-round.”

What is the virus? Where did it come from? Are humans at risk? What does it mean for the agricultural sector and wildlife? Experts answer your questions

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• ‘A genuine wildlife emergency’: everything you need to know about the arrival of H5 bird flu in Australia | Environment | The Guardian

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Petra StockSun 21 Jun 2026 02.11 EDTShare

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A deadly strain of bird flu, known as H5 bird flu, has arrived on the Australian mainland.

The federal agriculture minister, Julie Collins, this weekend confirmed that a brown skua – that had been found sick in Western Australia – had died from the H5N1 virus. The skua is a wild migratory bird.

A second bird, a sick giant petrel found nearby, was also likely infected.

Australia’s run as the only continent free of the virus has now ended. H5 bird flu has killed millions of birds and thousands of marine mammals since it began spreading across the globe in 2021.

A Pitt-led study reveals the biology of why the disease looked so different when it made the leap to cows and offers a framework for spotting its next new guise more quickly.

Home / News / How Bird Flu Hid in Dairy Cattle

Photography by Rayni Shiring, University of Pittsburgh

When H5N1 bird flu first began infecting U.S. cattle in early 2024, diagnosis was elusive, because in cows, the disease looked completely different. Instead of affecting the lungs, as H5N1 does in other mammalian species, it caused severe infection in the cows’ udders, largely sparing the lungs.  

A study by University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health researchers published June 19 in Science Advances provides the first mechanistic explanation for this peculiar new guise for H5N1, which now affects more than 100 bird and mammal species globally. The study also establishes a new way to help scientists spot bird flu’s next surprise move more quickly, saving precious time in mounting public-health measures to stem the spread. 

The disease first appeared in dairy cattle along the Texas Panhandle as stubborn cases of severe, necrotizing mastitis, a painful inflammatory condition that damages tissues in the mammary glands.  

“Mastitis is a classic disease in milk-production animals, and veterinarians were dutifully looking to all the usual suspects for the source, like bacterial pathogens,” said senior author Suresh Kuchipudi, professor and chair, Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, School of Public Health, at Pitt. “When the real culprit turned out to be bird flu, everyone in the field was caught completely by surprise. We hadn’t even remotely considered that cattle could be a host for H5N1.”  

In the weeks before the virus was identified, it moved from herd to herd, sickening the cattle—and contaminating their environments.  

“If a cow is infected, it sheds a lot of virus into the milk,” said Kuchipudi. “This raised concerns about occupational risk for farm workers. Also, there is a habit of feeding raw milk to domestic pets, like cats, and there have been instances of cats dying, which we studied previously.” He stressed that fortunately, pasteurization is effective at killing the virus, underlining the importance of avoiding raw milk. 

Kuchipudi has been studying influenza viruses for his entire career, with a particular focus on how receptor biology determines which species—and which tissues—can be infected. Typically, such studies involve staining cells for the presence of receptors that are known to work in a lock-and-key relationship with influenza, a subset of sugar-based molecules known as glycans.  

In initial studies by other groups, such experiments suggested that flu‑related glycan receptors were present in the noses, tracheas and lungs of cows. The fact that the animals were nonetheless not developing respiratory infections told the team there was more to the story.  

“Glycan biology is very complex,” said Kuchipudi. “We realized that, to understand what was really going on, we would need to use more innovative technologies and map out the finely detailed architecture that enables the virus to bind to cells.” Kuchipudi collaborated on the study with Harvard Medical School’s Lauren E. Pepi, an expert in the methodology for comprehensively cataloging the entirety of glycan structures, dubbed glycomics.   

Using a multimodal approach that combined binding experiments, staining methods and ultrahigh‑resolution imaging, the team revealed that not all glycan receptors were functioning the same in animals infected with bird flu. Only a particular subtype, known as N‑linked sialic acid receptors, could bind to H5N1. These receptors were virtually absent in cow airway tissue, but pervasive in udders, making them a “perfect breeding ground for the virus,” Kuchipudi said. 

The research provides a framework other scientists can use to potentially predict not just whether H5N1 can jump to new hosts, but also how.  

“We can preemptively screen different species and different tissues within them for susceptibility,” said Kuchipudi. “For example, would they exhibit respiratory symptoms? Would they show only mastitis, as in cows? Or would they show neurological disease, as our team has shown in cats? The lessons learned could potentially help prevent us from being caught by surprise again.”  

Other authors on the study were Surabhi Srinivas, Shubhada K. Chothe, Santhamani Ramasamy, Sougat Misra, Noel Chandan Nallipogu and Lindsey LaBella, all of Pitt; Yin-Ting Yeh, of The Pennsylvania State University; May Wang, of Harvard University; and Heidi L. Pecoraro and Brett T. Webb, of North Dakota State University. 

This research was supported by Pitt Public Health, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (FP00039373/AWD00010780). 

How Bird Flu Hid in Dairy Cattle – Health Sciences | University of Pittsburgh

By Reuters

June 19, 20261:11 AM PDTUpdated 13 hours ago

Australia, last continent without H5 bird flu, detects first suspected case | Reuters

SYDNEY, June 19 (Reuters) – Australia has detected its first suspected mainland case of H5N1 bird flu in a remote part of the country’s ​southwest, authorities said on Friday.

A migratory sea bird known as a brown ‌skua found in Western Australia’s Cape Le Grand National Park tested positive for avian influenza, and further testing is being conducted to confirm the strain, said state Agriculture Minister Jackie Jarvis.

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“We ​are taking the suspected case of H5 bird flu seriously,” Jarvis said. “If ​this is confirmed H5 bird incursion, there will be a rapid ⁠and coordinated national response.”

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The virulent strain of H5 bird flu has spread through ​wild bird and mammal populations since 2021, killing millions, infecting poultry and dairy farms ​and even some farmworkers.

Australia is the only continent without a confirmed mainland case of the deadly strain. H5 was confirmed on Heard Island, a sub-Antarctic Australian territory in late 2025.

The country has been ​preparing for the arrival of H5N1 bird flu by tightening biosecurity at farms, ​testing shore birds for disease, vaccinating vulnerable species and war-gaming response plans.

“While, if confirmed, this would ‌obviously ⁠be a very concerning development, Australia has spent the past few years preparing for this likelihood,” Environment Minister Murray Watt said in a statement.

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Results confirming whether the now-deceased brown skua had contracted H5 bird flu is expected on Saturday, Jarvis said.

She added that ​another sick bird, a ​giant petrol, was ⁠also found in the same area and is being tested for influenza.

Wayne Boardman, a wildlife veterinarian and associate professor at Adelaide ​University, said the virus could devastate Australia’s native wildlife.

“This strain ​of bird ⁠flu has caused huge die-offs of birds and sea mammals,” he said.

“My concerns are that if the H5N1 avian flu virus is confirmed, it will pose a huge ⁠risk ​to some of our more endangered shorebirds, some of ​our coastal raptors, and our precious, unique, endemic and endangered Australian sea lions, whose population is precarious.”