What does COVID-19 have to do with the way we interact with nature? The answer may surprise you. A field of study known as the “Ecology of Disease” explores the relationship between diseases throughout history and their origins in our natural world. Simplistically, human activity causes diseases to jump species, or rather, travel from nature or wildlife to humans. This certainly is an unintended consequence of our ever expanding population growth across the globe, but there are critical lessons to be learned.
Most of us never really ask where or how a disease originated. It may be surprising to learn their origins:
The Spanish Influenza in 1918 came from birds, which mutated to pigs and then to humans.
Ebola was first identified in 1976 near the Ebola River in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The prevalent theory is that it was in fruit bats, then monkey species and Chimpanzees.·
HIV, or Human Immunodeficiency Virus, was identified in 1983 and is believed to have
been in monkeys and chimpanzees. Humans contracted it when they were exposed to the blood of chimpanzees when butchering them for food.Measles is believed to have come from cattle and jumped to humans when they started living in close proximity.
MERS—Middle East Respiratory Syndrome—was identified in 2012 and originated in Saudi Arabia. It is believed that it may have originated in bats and was transmitted to camels, then humans.
COVID-19 (the coronavirus)—It is believed the virus jumped from bats to human in Wuhan China after humans were found to eating uncooked bats. In addition, scientists are exploring the additional possibility that pangolins sold at live animal markets also contributed to the transmission of coronavirus to humans.
Increased human populations, habitat destruction, altering ecosystems (such as with climate change), and even live animal markets all create conditions for mixing bowls for new diseases that jump from wildlife to humans. There are a multitude of examples where diseases don’t just happen, they are a direct result of how we interact with and treat the natural world. As human populations grow and expand across the globe we are invading habitats and interacting with wildlife in ways that evolution did not intend. Nature established natural barriers that are designed to protect us from exposure to animal pathogens, but we have eroded those barriers. One real consequence of these interactions is the exposure to diseases that we can not readily fend off. Diseases that come from animals have higher fatality rates in humans.
So one critical lesson we need to learn is that we cannot separate health policy from
environmental policy. If we don’t take care of nature, we are in fact, not taking care of our health. Nature is not to be conquered by us, but rather it should be protected by us.
When we protect our natural world, we are indeed protecting our health, our habitat and our future.