Australian officials should have prioritised a bird flu vaccine for vulnerable mammals including Tasmanian devils and sea lions, a top expert says.A leading ecologist has questioned the federal government’s response to the H5 outbreak after announcing a rollout of vaccines for captive populations of threatened birds. While welcoming the vaccine trials, Deakin University’s Professor of Wildlife Ecology Euan Ritchie told AAP it was regrettable that there was no vaccine available for Australian mammals. A senior CSIRO research scientist said that while H5 remained an avian-adapted virus, there had been spillover infections to 55 different mammalian species around the world. However, he said such infections remained relatively rare and required specific circumstances to occur. He said that while there has been testing in the US, there were no vaccines specific to Australian mammals, including marsupials.