Why Conserving Biodiversity Is Crucial to Prevent Future Pandemics

“Today, 7.8 billion humans exploit almost each and every ecosystem of the planet. Livestock have followed humans in most of these ecosystems and are now far more numerous than wild vertebrates,” Frederic Baudron, a systems agronomist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, said in an interview. For example, there are 4.7 billion cattle, pigs, sheep and goats and 23.7 billion chickens on Earth. “We live on an increasingly ‘cultivated planet’, with new species assemblages and new opportunities for pathogens to move from one species to another.”

However, the biodiversity crisis is seldom considered a global issue and often not a pressing one, and conservationists say it isn’t written about as often as it should be. “Media coverage for the biodiversity crisis is eight-times lower than for the climate crisis”, according to Baudron. “We need to reduce the frequency of pandemics like COVID-19 by conserving and restoring biodiversity globally, most crucially in disease hotspots.”

Read more here: https://science.thewire.in/environment/why-conserving-biodiversity-is-crucial-to-prevent-future-pandemics/