PORTLAND, Oregon (Reuters) - More than 10,000 migrating birds have died from an avian cholera outbreak blamed on reduced water flows through vast marshlands of southern Oregon and northern California known as Western Everglades, federal wildlife officials said.

Avian cholera, which poses virtually no risk to human health, surfaces in the region nearly every year in wetlands of the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge, but the recent waterfowl die-off there is the worst in over a decade, said Matt Baun, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"We estimate 10,000 to 15,000 birds will die, after everything is said and done," he said, adding that snow geese, American coots, American wigeon ducks, white-fronted geese and Northern pintail ducks have been the hardest hit.

The 53,600-acre (22,900-hectare) refuge encompasses a patchwork of shallow lakes, freshwater marshes and grasslands that serve as key roosting, nesting and feeding grounds for some 2 million birds that pass through the region along the Western migratory corridor called the Pacific Flyway.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/low-water-flows-cause-u-avian-cholera-outbreak-151227095.html