More than 200 birds at Illinois forest reserve believed to have been killed by bird flu last week

More than 200 birds at an Illinois forest preserve died in the last week, and authorities suspect they contracted the bird flu that's threatening flocks nationwide, the Forest Preserves of Cook County said in a statement. Though the virus is believed to pose a low risk to humans, farms across the country have had to kill millions of birds to stop the disease from spreading, according to The Associated Press. 

The statement comes after wildlife biologists found "numerous dead birds" at Baker's Lake, approximately an hour northwest of Chicago, on April 6. The biologists sent seven cormorants to state pathologists the next day. 

The forest preserve said it could not definitively declare an outbreak of H5 avian influenza among the birds because only the federal government can declare such incidences. But it cited laboratory results from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign backing the presumed diagnosis, and said the federal government is currently conducting more testing.