Riya Jariwala As we traverse pandemic times and feel the need to return to normalcy, scientists warn that more pandemics like the ongoing coronavirus will occur more frequently due to habitat destruction and deforestation. Eliminating natural environments of different species won’t make the species themselves disappear. As University of Montpellier infectious diseases researcher Roger Frutos puts it, “We instead create a patchwork, a mosaic of their environment that’s closer to ours, with houses that attract insects or sheds where bats can rest and find shelter.” And with that comes the spread of more infectious diseases, which is evident from the three pandemics that have occurred since 2002: SARS, Ebola, and currently SARS-CoV-2. All three of these viruses have jumped from wild animals to humans, and the probability of the spread of similar infectious diseases will only continue if we don’t reassess how our land conversion behaviors. The above infographic explains how environmental processes such as deforestation and climate change can ultimately lead to the spread of zoonoses, or diseases transmitted from animals to humans. Scientists are revealing how habitat change can often result in spillovers of infectious diseases to people, which are more likely as people encroach further into animal habitats and forests. (Infographic by Anya Srinivasan) This issue is a concern primarily to people living near deforestation in places where widespread burning is still practiced today, such as parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, and tropical forests in the Amazon. With major areas of the Amazon burned and deforestation across the Amazon basin, there has been greater malaria transmission in this region due to larvae living in environments closer to people instead of deep in the rainforest. Amy Vittor, an epidemiologist at the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute explains how clearing this forest has created habitats for the mosquito Anopheles darlingi, which is the most prominent transmitter of malaria in the Amazon, to breed. Her studies in the Peruvian Amazon revealed that there are more larvae counted in warm pools that form near roads and forest edges where trees can’t take up the water in such puddles anymore. This specific example reveals the fragility and intricacies of habitats that species depend on - our land clearance really does change habitat landscapes and could result in something as disastrous as multiple potential pandemics. These are statistics for the Amazon rainforest, and if we accounted for forests in Asia and Africa where farmers often burn land, we can expect more than 15 potential epidemics. As we’ve seen with the Covid-19 virus, it’s only a matter of time before a virus that could be 6,497 miles away like Covid-19 miles your city. These are just some important considerations as we assess the spike in coronavirus cases this November, and aim to anticipate the severity of similar future pandemics. (Infographic by Aditya Dawar) And we can see this happening all around the world. In Sabah, a region of Malaysian Borneo, malaria outbreaks also occur in coalition with increased forest clearing for palm oil and other plantations. Researchers have even linked deforestation to Lyme disease cases in the Northeastern United States. It’s also been proven that diseases are spread when new habitats attract pathogen-carrying species from forests. In Liberia, palm oil plantations that have been established through forest clearing attract hordes of mice that usually reside in the forest. These mice were drawn by the palm fruit at the plantations and settlements. Due to this, humans can get Lasssa virus if they come into contact with feces or urine from the micle or the bodily fluids of already infected people. The result: 36% of infected people in Liberia died.
The fact is, a 2015 Ecohealth Alliance study found that about one in three outbreaks of emerging diseases are related to deforestation land-use change. So the main takeaway from the spread of infectious diseases due to land clearance is that if we can just protect our environment, we can prevent future pandemics that we arguably won’t be able to control as much as this pandemic.
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riley
11/30/2020 03:36:34 pm
hi
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