Emerging infectious diseases at the wildlife-human interface pose significant health challenges, with domestic animals often serving as bridge hosts facilitating pathogen transmission. High-pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) exemplifies this One Health challenge, involving complex networks spanning wild and domestic populations with impacts on wildlife conservation, food security, and public health. The recent spillover of HPAI from wildlife to dairy cattle in North America, subsequently linked to more than 70 detected cases in humans raises concerns for similar events in other territories. Remote and/or traditional communities, such as the Falkland Islands (South Atlantic Ocean), face heightened vulnerability to zoonotic diseases due to increased contact between wildlife and livestock or people, limited access to health care and veterinary resources, and greater consequences from food supply disruptions.

Motivated by the ongoing HPAI crisis, we aim to identify barriers and opportunities to the prevention of virus spillovers in remote and/or traditional communities using the Falklands as an open-sky laboratory. Following HPAI incursion in 2023, the archipelago has experienced significant wildlife outbreaks, with the virus now established in wildlife reservoirs. The archipelago hosts ca. 3,000 people, ca. 400,000 sheep, and millions of seabirds in proximity. This situation has raised concerns about potential spillover to livestock and ultimately to humans, while already impacting wildlife conservation efforts and tourism-dependent livelihoods.