More than 600 swans reportedly were found dead at a nature reserve in Kazakhstan in Central Asia, home to a variety of rare and endangered species.
The deaths at the reserve, based around Lake Karakol, near the shores of the Caspian Sea, are believed to have been caused by the avian flu, officials said.
“Between 21 December and 8 January, a total of 675 swan carcasses were discovered on Lake Karakol," the Kazakh ecology ministry told AFP on Tuesday, CBS News reported.
Specialists were dispatched to investigate, the ministry said, CBS News reported.
Lake Karakol, artificially formed near the site of a nuclear plant, has been the focus of conservation efforts, and has raised overall concerns about environmental problems in western Kazakhstan, particularly in air and water pollution, CBS News noted.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in 2022 called for Lake Karakol to be preserved, describing it as a "unique reservoir."
Alaska's Division of Environmental Health noted avian flu has impacted millions of poultry birds and thousands of wild birds, and even killed a polar bear, CBS News has reported.
The polar bear death occurred in the fall, with avian flu cited as the cause on Dec. 6, according to Alaska's environment health division.
"This particular avian flu outbreak is of global scope," Douglas Clark, an associate environmental professor at the University of Saskatchewan, told CBS News at the time.
"It has affected many species of birds and mammals worldwide: that scope is unprecedented. Each of those interactions with a new host species creates novel conditions for the virus, and in 2020 we all learned what that can mean."
Avian flu outbreak has been noted across the globe, CBS News reported.
In its most recent situation report published in October, the World Organization for Animal Health stated more than half-million poultry birds died or were selectively slaughtered globally in the three-week period leading up to the report. In Argentina, 300 southern elephant seals died because of the virus.