Bird flu kills more than half the big cats at a Washington sanctuary

Bird flu has been on the rise in Washington state and one sanctuary was hit hard: 20 big cats – more than half of the facility’s population – died over the course of weeks.

The Wild Felid Advocacy Center of Washington announced the deaths Friday on Facebook. The nonprofit sanctuary is in Shelton, about 22 miles northwest of Olympia.

“It’s been one big nightmare. I never thought something like this would happen to us,” the center’s director and cofounder Mark Mathews told CNN affiliate KOMO. “Maybe only in a facility that had cats near each other, and ours are spread out over five acres.”

It is currently unknown exactly how the big cats contracted bird flu, but Mathews said the first death occurred around Thanksgiving.

The 20 animals that died include: five African Servals, four bobcats, four cougars, two Canada Lynxes, one Amur-Bengal tiger mix and other species of big cats.

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