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It is now considered “scientifically proven” that SARS-CoV-2 has passed from wild animals to humans, according to WWF. The nature conservation organization’s analysis deals with the wildlife trade in the Mekong region of Southeast Asia.
WWF calls for better protection of species
The result: of around 500 markets in larger cities where wildlife is often traded, about half are in regions with potentially high risk of zoonoses. “Although China issued a ban on the raising of wild animals for meat production in February, much more needs to be done in several countries in Southeast Asia,” said WWF.
“Species protection for endangered wild animals and public health care must be thought together urgently to curb the risk of viruses spreading to humans,” said Georg Scattolin, WWF International Program Director Austria. As part of a ten-point plan, he called for the rapid closure of illegal and unregulated wildlife markets, as well as stricter controls against illegal trade: “Smuggling wild animals beyond all the rules creates a broth of The ideal crop for viruses to spread to humans. That is why politicians and authorities must do much more. “
Wild animals are often a source of food
In many rural areas of the Mekong region, people still depend on wild animals for food security, including remote areas with malnutrition among children. Wild animals are also increasingly hunted for sale in cities. Large markets with low hygiene standards are particularly risky for the transmission of infectious diseases and also devastating from an animal welfare point of view. Wild and farm animals are sold and slaughtered side by side in live animal markets, such as those that exist in much of China and Southeast Asia.
A melting pot of new pathogens
Restaurants that cook wildlife dishes, as well as online and street sales, are also potential melting pot for new pathogens, according to WWF. But it’s not just markets that are a risk: “Corona outbreaks on European mink farms show that wildlife farms are also ticking off virus bombs. There are still hundreds of these in Southeast Asia,” Scattolin warned.
According to the analysis, tens of millions of wild animals are traded in the region each year as food or for use in traditional medicine. In addition to wild boars and deer, these are often rodents and bats, which are considered reservoirs for a large number of pathogens. “Ending the illegal and unregulated trade in wildlife is just as important as enforcing hygiene and safety practices in wildlife markets and restaurants,” Scattolin said.
Natural barriers are falling
However, regional networks and national agencies that monitor wildlife trafficking and enforce the law are severely underfunded, according to WWF. Therefore, more support at this level is needed to nip the risks of a pandemic in the bud. It is also critical that demand for high-risk wildlife trade products is reduced.
A second environmental problem is deforestation, which causes virus leaps from the animal kingdom to humans: from 1990 to 2010, the forest area in Southeast Asia fell from 268 million hectares to 236 million hectares. “When habitats are destroyed and natural barriers are removed, species come into contact with each other that previously weren’t in contact. If new settlement areas are created there, a new spatial closeness is created with humans and their livestock”, Scattolin said, explaining the consequences of deforestation.
According to WWF, examples from many regions of the world make the danger clear: Pig farms and orchards in Malaysia have paved the way for the transmission of the Nipah virus from fruit bats to humans. The expansion of rice fields and pig farming in Vietnam has accelerated the spread of Japanese encephalitis. Other infectious diseases are also driven by deforestation, as a 2010 Brazilian study already showed: deforestation of four percent of a forest was accompanied by a nearly 50 percent increase in malaria cases. The WWF called for an international action plan to stop the dangerous trade in wild animals and protect our nature and biodiversity around the world.
(Those: APA)
