Please take a look at this link.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/biodiversity-loss-is-hurting-our-ability-to-prepare-for-pandemics/

Contact with biodiversity through habitat destruction

I believe that individual density is a very importante factor, then, climate factors, such as temperature and humidity (lower temp. and higher humidiy are better for the virus).

Increasing frequency of disease outbreaks is related to biodiversity loss and climate change. Many factors have contributed to this rise, including global travel, trade and commerce and a high density living. Deforestation has led the animals to move away from their natural habitat bringing them closer to human habitation, hence, creating a greater opportunity for the spread of zoonotic diseases. Climate change, on the other hand, has caused human displacement and these displaced populations are vulnerable to biological threats, such as diseases like acute respiratory infections. So, the links of the disease to biodiversity and climate change are very striking.

I do think that there is no link between corona virus and the biodiversity and the virus seems to be as a mean of environmental balance to clean up the environment from several negative stresses such as pollution and to control the climate change. If you look to what has happened so-far you would find a significant reduction in environmental contamination and even great improve in ozone layer which surly that both would improve environment for better life. In fact the human has abused the environment in a way that may devastate natural life. The current coronavirus would be gone soon after.

Dear, Arvind, Andrew, Christian and Munira. Thanks a lot.

Dear Sedik,

What you have mentioned is related to prejudice or providence more than to scientific finding. Don’t you think so?

Is there a link between the Covid 19 pandemic and declining animal populations?

By Dr. Rudy Rudran, Scientist Emeritus, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC 

As a wildlife biologist I have conducted field research for nearly forty-five years in all three tropical continents; especially on Old- and New-World primates.  I have also trained about 3000 people from roughly 80 developing countries in wildlife conservation and management methods. My entire professional career was based on my concern for the decline of animal populations and finding ways to conserve them. 

The international Union for Conservation of Natural Resources (IUCN) estimates that anywhere from 14% to 53% of mammal, bird, reptile and amphibian species are currently threatened with extinction mainly due to human activities. Since human activities were implicated in the decline of most animal populations, there seems to be a connection between the two that triggered Covid19 to spread like wildfire throughout the world. Here’s the possible connection.   

Animal populations harbour numerous pathogens to which they are immune because of the resistance they have developed through millennia. However, when an animal population begins to decline in numbers what would be the response of its pathogens? They would likely find another host before the current host dies out, so that they can continue to thrive. 

What better host is there than humans whose populations have exploded since the last World War? Humans are everywhere, even in the remotest parts of the world. Furthermore, humans consume/contact animals like bats and snakes that live in the wild and carry pathogens. It takes just one person to be infected by an animal harbouring a pathogen to transfer it to several other people. 

Our current lifestyle is such that an infected person could also travel thousands of miles in a day. This kind of mobility is unlike that of most animals which are confined to a clearly defined  territory. Therefore transferring to such a host is of limited value to a pathogen. However, if a pathogen infects a human it has tremendous scope to spread over a very large area. This makes humans ideal hosts for any pathogen to spread rapidly from one place to another. Furthermore, pathogens are silent and invisible. Therefore, they can lurk in several places waiting for humans, and can find numerous ways to infect them; even those who do not eat exotic meat, and who do not or cannot travel etc. 

This is probably be what is happening with the spread of Covid 19. It began in Wuhan, China and within a few months it is in Europe and the Americas, due to the ease of long distance travel. So, what can we do about the rapid spread of a contagion that threatens the very fabric of human society? Do we prevent people from consuming exotic animals? Do we curtail their travel? Doing either would be quite difficult if not impossible. 

So, humans are left with their scientific ingenuity to develop vaccines. Developing vaccines takes time, Until we find a cure millions of people will die. And as countries try spatial isolation and other means to prevent the pathogen’s spread millions more will lose their jobs and live in misery. The economy will also collapse and take several years to recover.  

Is this cycle of grief and triumph of discovering a vaccine worth it? Or is it better to let pathogens reside in their original hosts. The best way to do that is to protect the natural habitats that their hosts live in. This way we will deal with the cause of the problem, which is the decline of animal populations rather than fight its symptoms which is the spread of the pathogen. 

Why not consider the benefits of allowing space for other living things to survive and learn to coexist with them? If we do that we will also enjoy other benefits of protecting natural habitats. 

For instance, natural habitats can absorb carbon dioxide and help mitigate global warming and climate change. Such problems are perhaps just as bad if not more lethal than the pandemic. They can lead to melting polar ice caps, sea level rise, hurricanes, ocean acidification etc. that would make life intolerable not only for humans, but for all living things on this planet. No one wants this to happen. Let us hope that we can avoid this through clear headed thinking and action before it's too late for all of us. 

No, rather Corona virus is a gift of nature to control, protect and sustain the biodiversity. Emergence of Corona virus is due to unethical activities of human beings. It is the punishment of nature for limitless and unscientific use of natural resources in one side and suppressing the needs of all living beings including human kind on the other side.

Yes- very much

I don't think both can be interlinked significantly. As per the current research and scientific understanding of Corona it has been observed that Nature is blooming worldwide. Biodiversity is at best since last few months if we minus Australian fire.

Not at all. Directly linked to population densities.

It is hard to accept that but it seems very clear that this virus was naturally or artificially invented due to significant environmental power to stop human destructive abuse.

In my opinion, natural biodiversity, i.e. the wealth of ecologically interacting with each other in various ecosystems of millions of species of flora, fauna, fungi and microorganisms (unicellular organisms, bacteria etc.) is the greatest achievement we know of the billions of years of evolutionary processes on planet Earth and in the context of the Universe as we know it. This is the greatest wealth of forms of living organisms, which through the development of human civilization diminishes faster by the day. Day by day through the increase of environmental pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, climate change and the gloal warming process, which results in, among others more and more frequent drought and forest fires and other plant formations, the number of species of various life forms on earth is constantly decreasing. Man is only one species, in some respects unique, because through the development of technology it was able to adapt to functioning in various environments. However, through this adaptation, man has led to the fact that many other species of life forms have already died out and this process continues.

In contrast, viruses are not a life form. The virus as the DNA code itself surrounded by a specific structure made of organic compounds is one of the factors that billions of years ago could have played a great role in the creation of life on planet Earth. The simplest in their structure and organization of life forms, such as bacteria and unicellular organisms are, thanks to DNA code mutation processes, able to quickly adapt to changing environmental conditions. Viruses that are not living organisms but have a significant impact on entire ecosystems of living organisms and on particular species of specific life forms also possess this feature. These processes take place for billions of years, while man has been functioning on Earth only for several hundred thousand years and, compared to other species of life forms, has the greatest negative impact on the issue of unbalance in nature and successive reduction of natural biodiversity on planet Earth.

On the other hand, only recently has man noticed the negative effects of developing his civilization activity. Man already knows that, despite technological development, he can be completely defenseless and powerless against the forces of nature, against natural disasters and weather anomalies resulting from the increasingly rapid global warming process. Man understood that he should care for the preservation of natural biodiversity on Earth. Therefore, nature protection programs and established national parks have been developed for over 100 years. Has man understood this too late? The effect (negative side effect) of the industrial revolution (largely based on energy and motor vehicles powered by mineral combustion), which began over 200 years ago, is the current high level of greenhouse gas emissions and the accelerating global warming process, which according to prognostic models of change processes climate may lead to climatic Armageddon at the end of the 21st century. If this extremely negative but probable scenario comes true, the greatest survival possibilities of subsequent disasters (threatening many life forms in various ecosystems) will have, as in the distant past, the simplest (in terms of organism organization) life forms and viruses. In view of the above, I also agree with the thesis that the reduction of biodiversity caused by man weakens our ability to combat such crises as pandemics caused by viruses and microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, cyanobacteria, protozoa, etc.). Perhaps due to the development of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pandemic causing Covid-19 disease, people's awareness of this issue will increase.

Greetings,

Dariusz Prokopowicz

Please consult recent studies of Prof. Marco Tschapka and Prof. Simone Sommer (University of Ulm, Germany). They have found an interesting correlation between land use change, biodiversity and spreading of viruses.

Gregor Kozlowski Dariusz Prokopowicz Sedik Ahmed Kasim Al-Hiyaly Gopal Shukla Prabuddh Kumar Mishra Abhijit Mitra M. A. Azadi Rasanayagam Rudran Eduardo Mendoza-Maya Munira Nasiruddin Christian Wehenkel Andrew Paul McKenzie Pegman Arvind Singh

Thanks a lot for sharing your views and knowledge.

Biodiversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. It's not the matter but climate change is indirectly involved with the emerging diseases.

I think unethical activities of people and their mobility are causing the spread of infections in the multicultural cities in the world

The outbreak of COVID-19 clearly indicates that destruction of chain which supports human life is directly proportional with destruction of biodiversity. Loss of biodiversity invites pathogens to pass animals and people so biodiverse ecosystem is the key to inhabit the rapid spread of pathogens. There are lot of anthropogenic activities which upset the delicate balance of nature like encroachment on wildlife habitats, deforestation, rapid change in climate change. COVID-19 is the result of all these activities of human that is the alarming message of Nature to us.

I can visualize one possibility. In the case if a rich biodiversity is spreading in our suburbs and cities, it may bring in closer contact animals vectors of corona virus (and other viruses) with the human population, hence a higher risk of contamination.

It is related anyhow

Some scientists believe that this epidemic is the result of biodiversity that is abused. Covid-19 is a disease in which the reservoir of the infectious agent is a wild animal. Therefore, this coronavirus epidemic is indicative of the current state of biodiversity. More specifically, the way humans mistreat it.

How does one come to suspect the pangolin of being at the origin of the pandemic, when it is a rather solitary and nocturnal mammal which lives in the tropical forests of Asia and d Southern Africa? Theoretically, his contact with humans is limited, and therefore the probability that he will transmit a virus to us is low. Except that the pangolin is one of the most poached species in the world. It is both sought after for its scales (prized by traditional Chinese medicine) and its meat, mainly consumed in China, Southeast Asia and Africa. This trafficking in exotic animals has two major consequences. On the one hand, it increases the risk of an epidemic by putting us in contact with rare infectious agents, this trade supplying markets present today in large urban centers. On the other hand, these traffics bring various animals into contact and allow infectious agents to recombine and thus be able to cross the barrier between species.

Yes as I think because every foul play on biodiversity has a significant effect on all living organisms including man

Biodiversity is not responsible or the key issue to spread the Corona virus worldwide. Chinese are always habituated with all kinds of natural food (animal or plant origin) since prehistoric time, but why only recently (December 2019) Corona virus havoc is started from China? It is a matter of deep thinking. Human behavior and Ecology both are essential for maintaining a sustainable biodiversity, without which the civilization of this planet will be collapsed. Ecology (social and natural) of this planet is day by day loosing its stability due to unwise and inhuman behavior of human. Shortage of human knowledge on the handling, controlling and preventing of rapid spreading of Corona virus through human being is the main cause to spread this virus worldwide, not biodiversity.

Thank you all for your contribution to the discussion. Stay safe and well

Dear

Muhammed Ashraful Alam , Dipak Khadka , Samiullah Soomro , Jean-Pierre Jost , Rabin Thapa , Ben Boubakary , Oyebamiji Oladeni Fafioye , thank you all

I don't think so. I believe that the human ability to travel great distances in a short time may be the main cause.