'We are Entering An Era of Pandemics, It Will Only End When We Protect The Rainforest'
'We are entering an era of pandemics – it will end only when we protect the rainforest.' Reducing deforestation and the exploitation of wildlife are the first steps in breaking the chain of disease emergence. By Peter Daszak, The Guardian, July 28, 2020.
In late 2013, in the village of Meliandou in rural Guinea, a group of children playing near a hollow tree disturbed a small colony of bats hiding inside. Scientists think that Emile Ouamouno, who later became the first tragic “index” case in the west African Ebola outbreak, was likely exposed to bat faeces while playing near the tree.
Every pandemic starts like this. An innocuous human activity, such as eating wildlife, can spark an outbreak that leads to a pandemic. In the 1920s, when HIV is thought to have emerged in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, scientists believe transmission to humans could have been caused by a bushmeat hunter cutting themselves while butchering a chimpanzee. In 2019, we can speculate that a person from south-west China entered a bat cave near their village to hunt wildlife for sale at the local wet market. Perhaps they later developed a nagging cough that represents the beginning of what we now know as Covid-19. Now, a growing human population, ever-encroaching development and a globalised network of travel and trade have accelerated the pace of pandemic emergence. We’re entering a new pandemic era.
Most pandemics begin in the emerging disease hotspots of the world; the edges of forests in regions such as west Africa, the Amazon basin and south-east Asia. Tropical rainforests are home to a rich diversity of wildlife, which in turn carry an array of viruses. We know far more about these animals than we do about the viruses they carry. An estimated 1.7m viruses exist in mammals and birds (the origins of most pandemics), but less than 0.1% have been described. They spread to millions of people each year; though they often don’t cause noticeable symptoms, the sheer volume means that plenty can.
Before humans became an agricultural species, our populations were sparser and less connected. A virus infecting a hunter-gatherer might only reach family members or perhaps a hunting group. But the Anthropocene, our new geological epoch, has changed everything. A great acceleration of human activity has dramatically altered our planet’s landscapes, oceans and atmosphere, transforming as much as half of the world’s tropical forest into agriculture and human settlements...
More,
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/28/pandemic-era-rainforest-deforestation-exploitation-wildlife-disease
= new reply since forum marked as read
Info I'd like to use to counter all kinds of wingers but am usually too polite to sling it all in their faces, especially neighbors & family.
6 days ago I emailed myself this, saved for my next round of attempting to persuade my son to at least slow down on red meat. (His consumption of it offends my sensibilities - he's 33yo & did not develop his voracious carnivore appetite at home.)
Overall. Collapsing trees across Brazil emits high density of carbon emissions, a greenhouse gas effect also occurs when these trees collapse. ... Overall, Deforestation in Brazil alone is highly detrimental to Earth's Global Warming crisis today.
https://www.arcgis.com
Deforestation in Brazil -
CATTLE RANCHING is the LEADING CAUSE of Deforestation in the AMAZON RAINFOREST
In Brazil, this has been the case since at least the 1970s: government figures attributed 38 percent of deforestation from 1966-1975 to large-scale cattle ranching. Today the figure in Brazil is closer to 70 percent.
Feb 26, 2020
https://rainforests.mongabay.com › ...
Amazon Destruction -
How much Brazilian beef does the US import?
According to records from the USDA Economic Research Service, the U.S. imported 140.9 million pounds of beef from Brazil last year. This is a relatively high import volume in recent years, though the early 2000s saw the highest import volumes, exceeding 280 million pounds.
Mar 29, 2019
https://www.wlj.net
FRESH Brazilian beef might be coming back to the U.S.
Jun 6, 2019
Fresh Brazilian beef might be returning to the U.S. However, questions regarding inspections exist, and long-running worries about the safety of the U.S. cattle herd remain.
On Monday, March 25, Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Farming issued a beef trade-related announcement. It claimed the USDA had announced plans to audit the Brazil’s beef inspection system in June 2019.
The Brazilian announcement came less than a week after President Donald Trump met with Brazil’s President Jair Messias Bolsonaro. After the March 19 meeting, the pair of presidents issued a joint statement regarding trade topics, beef among them.
https://www.wlj.net/top_headlines/fresh-brazilian-beef-might-be-coming-back-to-the-u-s/article_a47b9ff6-5234-11e9-aad9-a39034f5f461.html
So, you want to help save the planet's inhabitable ecosystems? Then, save the oceans' ecosystems and the planet's rainforest. The biggest step in saving the rainforests is to stop eating so much beef.
Rant off.
Sorry, DU, I saved this info for my son but since Rainforest fragility is the topic, I thought I might add this....but it probably belongs in another form.
