The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service announced on Wednesday that the avian flu, or H5N1, has been detected in several rats in California, CBS News first reported.

Officials confirmed that four black rats were found to have the highly contagious bird flu in late January in Riverside County, California, the location of two recent poultry outbreaks. The agency’s update released this week also noted H5N1 detection in a fox in North Dakota, a harbor seal in Massachusetts, a bobcat in Washington state, and domestic cats in Oregon and Montana.

The announcement comes the same day as the USDA moved to rehire critical staff who had experience working on past avian flu outbreaks but were let go in the DOGE-led purge of thousands of federal employees.

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