Richmond

Avian influenza or “bird flu” is hitting Bay Area poultry farms hard, with a quarter of a million birds euthanized in Sonoma County this week alone. Mike Weber, the co-owner of Sunrise Farms in Petaluma, says around 82,000 of his egg-laying chickens had to be euthanized after birds started testing positive for avian flu.

It’s only the second time in history that the ocean salmon fishery has been closed in California, and the decision reflects a major decline in fish populations after the state’s driest three-year period on record.

Local officials and scientists have yet to nail down how many fish have died, but the reports have been coming in non-stop since Friday.

The carcass of a 41-foot adult female gray whale landed at San Francisco’s Crissy Field on March 31. A second adult female was found April 3 at Moss Beach in San Mateo County. A third was found April 7 floating near the Berkeley Marina and the following day another at Muir Beach. A video of the fifth dead whale was posted on social media Friday.

The carcasses of four gray whales have been found around the San Francisco Bay Area in eight days -- an alarming string of deaths that constitutes an unusual mortality event, defined by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as a significant die-off of a marine species.

A gray whale carcass washed ashore at Crissy Field on Wednesday morning. Veterinarians and biologists from the center and from the California Academy of Sciences plan to perform a necropsy in coming days on the island to determine the cause of death.

As California streets empty under the stay-at-home measures to “flatten the curve” of the novel coronavirus outbreak, wild animals have come to reclaim their domain.

The Marine Mammal Center and California Academy of Sciences are reporting cause of death for one.

A rescue center says California sea lions are coming down with a potentially fatal bacterial infection in near-record numbers.The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito says more than 220 sea lions rescued this year have been diagnosed with leptospirosis.

The wind known as the Diablo is picking up again, the air is dry, there is no rain in sight and the killer wildfires that have scorched the wine country of Northern California remain almost completely uncontained. Officials warned Wednesday that some of the big fires could merge. Amid these grim bulletins, the huge utility company PG&E acknowledged that the extreme winds late Sunday and early Monday had knocked trees into power lines in conditions conducive to wildfires.

Mass evacuations were ordered in what is being called one of the most destructive fire emergencies in the state’s history.

According to the National Weather Service, 36.5 million residents, 98% of Californians, are under a heat advisory Friday as a high-pressure system broils the state from the Oregon to Mexico borders.

Sightings of wild animals increase as humans shelter in place

Coyotes’ recent occupation of one of the most densely human-populated cities in America may have started around 2003. That’s when a team led by Benjamin Sacks of the University of California, Davis extracted DNA from the blood of a male coyote captured in the Presidio and later returned there.