LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A common disease has been confirmed as the killer of thousands of waterfowl along Clear Lake’s Northshore.

Over the last few weeks, dead ducks and other waterfowl have been found on Clear Lake’s shoreline in the Lucerne area, as Lake County News has reported.

“It is avian cholera,” Kyle Orr, spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, confirmed to Lake County News.

As many as 3,500 waterfowl are estimated to have been affected by this latest avian cholera case, Orr said.

Orr said that on Wednesday, the agency picked up 2,600 dead or dying waterfowl on Clear Lake.

He said the impacted species include, but are not limited to, ruddy ducks, northern pintails and mallards.

Orr said CDFW doesn’t plan any other further response at this time.

“We’re back in a monitoring phase,” he said.

Anyone who picks up any dead waterfowl should use protective clothing that can be disposed of or disinfected, Orr said.

Additionally, he said disposal methods that should be used for the dead waterfowl are incineration or dead burial.

The National Wildlife Health Center reported that avian cholera in wild birds is primarily caused by the type one strain of the bacterium Pasteurella multocida, which most commonly affects ducks and geese, coots, gulls and crows.

The bacteria can be transmitted in a variety of ways – bird-to-bird contact, through infected birds’ feces and other secretions, through food containing the bacteria and aerosol transmission, the center said.

The illness is highly contagious and is known to cause die-offs very rapidly. Quick action, including carcass collection, is used to prevent the disease from spreading, officials reported.

In 2007, an avian cholera die-off on the Northshore claimed more than 8,000 waterfowl, primarily ruddy ducks, about the same number that died in a January 2004 outbreak, as Lake County News has reported.

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