Keeping the wild biodiversity intact essential for survival of humankind
Cattle grazing in Minneriya National Park
Our lives will never be the same again. The new coronavirus, a zoonotic pathogen, which is believed to have jumped species to spread the illness of COVID-19 among humans, could be taken as a crystal clear message that nature in all its diversity needs respect and protection.
This is for the very survival of humankind!
Even with all the advancements that humankind has made in leaps and bounds over millennia, the world has not been able to fathom with certainty the origins of this tiny virus.
Is it from bats? Did it jump from bats to an intermediary host such as the pangolin and finally to humans?
It is in lockdowns and curfews to keep the virus under control that the International Day for Biological Diversity has come around on May 22 with its crucial but obvious theme of ‘Our solutions are in nature’.
With a call to re-examine the relationship of humans to the natural world, the spotlight has also fallen on people’s dependency on healthy and vibrant ecosystems for their health, water, food, medicines, clothes, fuel, shelter and energy.
Over the years, environmentalists the world over in general and Sri Lanka in particular have been underscoring the importance of safeguarding ‘biodiversity’ – a combination of ‘biological’ and ‘diversity’ – which encompasses the variety of life such as plants, animals, fungi and micro-organisms on earth and the communities that they form and the habitats in which they live.
Now that Sri Lankans have had ample time to reflect on how we would have to shape our lives and live with the virus and other viruses, we also need to pay attention to the ‘One Health’ call by the World Health Organization (WHO).
This is an approach to design and implement programmes, policies, legislation and research in which multiple sectors communicate and work together to achieve better public health outcomes. The One Health approach is said to be relevant to food safety, the control of zoonoses (diseases that can spread between animals and humans, such as flu, rabies and coronaviruses) and combating antibiotic resistance (when bacteria change after being exposed to antibiotics and become more difficult to treat).
What should Sri Lanka’s future actions entail to stop the country from further sliding down the slippery slope where people get exposed to more and more diseases originating in animals but causing virulence among humans?
“The most important thing is to try as much as possible to prevent direct contact between wildlife and humans, which is also a key factor in safeguarding biodiversity,” reiterated the former Director-General of the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC), Dr. Sumith Pilapitiya.
He brings into focus how Sri Lankans have direct contacts with wild animals, pointing out that it is through the illegal sale of bush meat and encroaching into the homes of wild animals, legally or illegally.
“The more we do this, the more we come into contact with wild animals, endangering ourselves,” said Dr. Pilapitiya.
The examples within tiny Sri Lanka are numerous – ruthless intrusion to forest lands in the name of development or some other innocuous reason by the state as well as private institutions without a thought for sustainability.
“Jungles are cleared on whims and opened up for cultivations without a plan. Before encroaching into these jungles, we could take a close look at whether we are maximizing the use of land already under cultivation and how farming methods could be enhanced,” he said.
Pointing out that as humans intrude into jungle areas, more domesticated animals come into contact with wild animals, he says that transmission of disease among them is made easier and a disease pathway created to humans. It also allows more contacts for rodents and bats – carriers of many diseases – which thrive in human-dominated landscapes to have access to people.
Unseen and unnoticed to people, there are complex ecosystems in undisturbed wilderness areas and when humans encroach, they destroy and dilute their complexity, making it easier for human-wildlife contact and providing a direct line for the spread of animal diseases among people, says Dr. Pilapitiya, looking at cattle being allowed to graze in protected National Parks which are the homes of wild animals. These cattle will pick up diseases and bring them right back to the villages, while it also occurs the other way round. Cattle would take diseases to wild animals causing a crisis within those ecosystems.
Lamenting that wild animals are not governed by man-made administrative boundaries such as areas coming under different agencies (DWC, Forest Department etc), he says that Sri Lanka should consider forest coverage as one entity and not allow opening up parts of it as there are long-term implications.
This is an urgent need as across the world tropical forests have been halved in the last century, leading to profound habitat loss. This causes a ripple effect on ecosystems and the spread of diseases.
The data need to be taken seriously – 60% of infectious diseases are known to be of zoonotic origin. Around 72% of these 60% of infectious diseases cause serious illness. So it’s best to keep the wild ecosystems intact, adds Dr. Pilapitiya.
| Panic buying and plastic pollution | |
| In a video titled ‘COVID-19 & Biodiversity’, released by Biodiversity Sri Lanka to mark the International Day for Biological Diversity on Friday, Emeritus Prof. Sarath Kotagama who is Chair of Environmental Science at the Colombo University expresses concern over panic buying during the pandemic, increased waste and plastic pollution.Whether it is Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Ebola, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) or the latest COVID-19, he says that all these have been zoonotic diseases. From 1960 to 2004, 334 diseases of varying virulence have emerged out of nature. “This is an SOS (the distress signal to ‘Save Our Souls’) from nature that we should act more responsibly and not repeat the mistakes of the past such as mass-scale deforestation,” he cautions. Biodiversity Sri Lanka is a national platform owned and driven by the private sector to promote strong engagement in biodiversity and environmental conservation.
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