Biodiversity Conservation – Way of Preventing Pandemics

Amidst COVID-19 pandemic, the whole world is isolated and threatened by half-a-million demises, the need for prolonging and effective methods to prevent the footprints of any such holocaust has come to our minds.  While several intellectual and scientists have concentrated on the need for improved healthcare infrastructures, environmentalists have suggested focusing on a grandiose step – "Healing The Nature"

We have deceived Nature

In 2019, Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services told: “about a million plant and animal species are at risk of extinction, along with 40% of insects”. A 2017 study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, displayed biological eradication representing fearsome assault on nature at the foundations of civilizations, indicated our inhuman arrogance towards nature – pushing towards vulnerability to unfavorable cues.

The Pandemics – Causes    

This is not the first time; human history accurately exhibited the repeated occurrence of pandemics – characteristically crop up at the nexus between nature and anthropogenic activities. In Western Africa, the closer contact of humans with the wildlife upon rapid deforestation resulted in the Ebola outbreak. While the Avian and Nipah flues were associated with rigorous poultry and pig farming, respectively, in Malaysia. Furthermore, unwelcomed interactions of humans and critters resulted in catastrophic Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), West Nile Virus, and Zika Virus diseases. Most of the emerging zoonotic diseases are directly transmitted from the animals to humans upon contact like rabies, but can also spread through vectors – Lyme which is caused by pathogenic bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi and transmitted by backlegged ticks.

According to the US Centre of Disease Control and Prevention, about 75% of emerging diseases are zoonotic. Significantly, deforestation has driven the exotic species out of their evolutionary niches into anthropomorphized space – interact with new strains of pathogens.

“An additional human interference enhances the risk of contagion” experts said.

Endangered exotic red panda (Ailurus fulgens), native to
Himalaya and Southwest China

 

Trails of Coronavirus

Two years ago, in observation of the rapid deforestation and other environmental pressures in Asia, scientists had predicted the emergence of new coronavirus from bats, probably due to the loss of natural habitats as well as their adaptation in and near human settlements.

Bats in anthropomorphized space

What can be done to prevent future pandemics?

·    Sustainable use of forest resources

·       Reforestation, ensuring the wellbeing of wildlife, and climatic homeostasis

·  Creation of buffering zone between critters and human, to minimize their interaction with human settlements, reducing transmission of zoonotic diseases

·    Checking global wildlife trades, will ascertain the local containment of various pathogens

·   Biodiversity conservation; preventing future pandemics lies in the amount of gratitude shown towards nature and understanding the peerless functionality of biodiversity in supporting human life. 

  

Scientific studies have precluded the unparalleled ability of biodiversity conservation in preventing the footprints of novel diseases, their emergence and re-emergence, and leaping into pandemics.

In essence, living in ties with nature ideally endorses human wellbeing.

Sources:

Daszak, P., Olival, K.J. and Li, H., 2020. A strategy to prevent future pandemics similar to the 2019-nCoV outbreak.