The news from China is bad. The lifting of strict COVID-19 regulations in early December -regulations that had been sternly enforced for almost three years, under the country’s so-called “Zero-COVID” policy- has been followed by a great surge of infections. The existence of such a surge was suspected for weeks but denied by Chinese officialdom, who withheld data. Then, on January 14, a spokeswoman from the National Health Commission admitted that the country had suffered almost 60,000 Covid-related deaths since December 8. The virus is belatedly tormenting China the way it tormented northern Italy, New York City, and parts of Brazil back in spring of 2020.

The China surge hit first in urban areas, including Beijing and Shanghai, but also far-flung cities such as Dongguan in the South and Yulin in the North. Hospitals were overwhelmed, medicines (including simple fever reducers such as ibuprofen) became scarce, and many healthcare professionals continued to work despite being infected themselves. Since early January, the disease has begun piling up victims in rural areas well. Small clinics and community health centers are filling with patients to whom they can offer only basic care. The Chinese population remains especially vulnerable because immunity from past infections is very low and full vaccination of elderly people is low also. The three years of “Zero-COVID” were evidently wasted by Chinese authorities, who might have used that delay period to prepare better for the inevitable. But they did not.

So the pandemic is not over. The Covid coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2, is not gone. It’s as busy as ever, replicating, mutating, evolving. It will almost certainly remain in the human population forever. And there is no guarantee (despite what some people believe they have heard) that it will evolve into a less harmless form, such as the viruses that cause common colds. That misunderstanding is sometimes supported by an ill-informed adage that passes for wisdom: “A successful parasite does not kill its host.” Wrong. The correct statement would be: “A successful parasite does not kill its host until it has had time to infect another host.” If the coronavirus infects person A, transmits to person B and person C, and from person C onward to others, then it has achieved evolutionary success, whether or not person A dies. Darwinian natural selection, the main mechanism of evolution, does not “see” and does not “care” what happens to infected individuals after they have transmitted a virus.

Amid the continuing turmoil, we need to appreciate that SARS-CoV-2 may remain not just present but deadly, and that we may need to continue vaccinating against it, and fighting it in other ways, for decades.

Where did this virus come from? How did it get into humans? Those questions are also important, because the answers will help guide our efforts to prevent similar viral pandemics in the future. The mystery of the origins of SARS-CoV-2 has been hotly discussed, with mostly scientific experts on one side of the matter and mostly amateur sleuths plus a few journalists on the other. That discussion has been muddled by misinformation, speculation, and accusation, all offered to suggest that the virus somehow leaked from a laboratory. A lab leak is theoretically possible, but there is no positive evidence that it happened. There is much empirical evidence and expert analysis by molecular evolutionary virologists and epidemiologists, on the other hand, suggesting that the virus probably reached humans by natural spillover from a wild animal. That seems to have occurred in or around a certain “wet market” in the city of Wuhan. The animal carrying the virus may have been a raccoon dog or a palm civet or a bamboo rat or one of the other wild creatures, captured live and transported to Wuhan, that were on sale for food in the market. Some evidence even suggests that two distinct chains of human infection began in the market, which might reflect viral transmission from two different animals. The carrier animal (or animals) likely acquired the virus, either in the wild or during transport, from a horseshoe bat. Viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 have been detected in horseshoe bats in southern China, and also in Thailand and Laos, just across the southern Chinese border.

More evidence is needed, but the process of gathering such evidence and sharing it among scientists has been severely constrained by two factors: the pandemic itself and mutual distrust between the Chinese government and its critics in the West, much exacerbated by this origins controversy.

One more thing is important for everyone to remember: that the trafficking of wild animals for food-bats or raccoon dogs in China, bats or pangolins in Africa, other creatures elsewhere- is not the only disruptive activity that exposes humans to wildlife viruses. The extraction of timber and fossil fuels from richly diverse tropical ecosystems is another. The mining of strategic minerals such as coltan—a material essential for the manufacture of high-tech electronic devices—is still another. Therefore, anyone who owns a smart phone or a laptop computer or a fancy camera, or even a new car, also owns a share of responsibility for the continuing threat of viral spillover.

Eight billion humans presently inhabit this planet, all of us hungry, all of us thirsty, all of us consuming energy and wood and other material resources, in various quantities, as our appetites dictate and our levels of affluence allow. At the other end of the spectrum of sentience lie viruses, these relatively simple creatures, of which Earth harbors many millions of different forms. Among the millions, maybe one or two million kinds of virus reside in nonhuman mammals and birds. I highlight mammals and birds because they are generally the sources of the new viruses that infect people—not just SARS-CoV-2 and the original SARS virus of 2003, but also Ebola virus and Marburg and Lassa and Hendra and Nipah and HIV and many others.

With our voracious consumption, our disruption of diverse ecosystems, our devastation of natural landscapes all over the globe, we humans continue driving the most vulnerable of our fellow creatures toward extinction: the western chimpanzee, the eastern lowland gorilla, the tiger, the slender-billed curlew, the sociable lapwing, Hill’s horseshoe bat, and too many others to name, each serving as host to its own viruses. Many of those viruses are malleable opportunists. Evolution allows them to change, rather quickly, and compels them to survive. As the planet gets smaller and emptier, their best remaining opportunity will be to infect us.

That’s a grim and ironic sort of justice, and we should do all possible not to earn it.

L'articolo Ecological disruption and pandemic threats proviene da InsideOver.

Since poaching rhino horns became a well organised international trade several years ago, its tempo and drive has resembled a military operation. Current figures show that two to three African rhinos are poached in various locales across Africa every day. This has been the statistical norm for five years now. Elsewhere, particularly the Sumatran (Indonesian) and other vulnerable subspecies remain on the cusp of extinction. The war being waged for the horns of the Black and White African rhinoceros, however, gives rise to the bulk of statistics.

In South Africa and various other responsive regions across the continent, numbers are rising in some private and state reserves. Thanks to some innovative and intense responses from government and private foundations, this is a war where the good guys are making headway, yet the situation remains fraught. A new film starring actress Shannon Elizabeth, has outlined the nature of the illegal trade in rhino horn, while giving a clear glimpse of future challenges. Stroop: Journey into the Rhino Horn War lays bare the alarmingly established trade in poached rhino horn, documenting the illicit product’s journey from the African veld to the murky trafficking backrooms of China and Vietnam.

Success comes in spite of poaching pressure

Despite some initially dire statistics – where often smaller, private reserves around South Africa were completely cleaned out of resident rhino in targeted attacks – the effort to conserve rhinos has had some notable successes. A decade ago, approximately 20,800 rhinos were roaming the earth. Today, overall rhino numbers have gone up to around 29,500 – a substantial increase in population numbers.

Loss of genetic diversity – with the Northern White rhino subspecies declared functionally extinct in 2018 – remains a large concern for future population stability. The simple numerical impact of over ten years of intense, organised poaching, has also made for a desperate backdrop to rhino survival. It does often seem, however, particularly in South Africa, where the government together with polished conservation organisations have worked in tandem to safeguard rhinos, that the good guys can win.

South Africa has brought Southern White rhino numbers up from a mere 100 individuals circa 1920, to around 20,000 today. Similar success stories dot this landscape, with the Indian and Nepalese authorities also presiding over the rise of Greater One-horned, or Indian rhino numbers. From as few as 200 individuals, that species numbers around 3,550 animals today. In South Africa, statistics show that the larger reserves like Kruger National Park – in reality, a transnational park sharing a massive conservation area with neighbouring Mozambique – offer poachers the most opportunity. Where land is expansive and outposts distant, poachers operate with greater impunity.

Stroop: Journey into the Rhino Horn War has been praised as the first top-to-bottom, comprehensive recording of the rhino horn trade in all of its grisly reality. Both a shocking expose for many removed from the African bush, as well as an alarm call for the future, the film has galvanised further public support for rhino conservation. Rhinos across Africa are often subject to VIP treatment from armed guards, who trail individuals day and night in order to protect them. Stroop makes it plain that in this dire reality, that kind of paramilitary conservation simply has to intensify.

The film opened the Rotterdam Wildlife Film Festival in October 2018, and both as a documentary and expose, has won rave reviews wherever it’s been screened. Perhaps most revealing for some viewers, the movie clearly shows how middlemen and other traders in Asia play on the limited prospects or existing poverty of the poachers who do the killing. A complex, nuanced trade, the film reveals why it is so difficult to tackle rhino poaching from a single entry point.

Is the fight for rhinos’ survival succeeding?

“iJob ijob” is a common refrain in South Africa, and it essentially denotes resignation. One’s job is one’s job and whatever one must do to make money is just the way it is. Very often, removed from an educated understanding of the implications of poaching as well as any of the financial benefits of conservation, local illegal hunters are dazzled by the thousands of dollars paid for rhino horns. Far removed from Asian middlemen halfway across the world, locals do the dirty work, pass on horns to furtive, interloper agents, who then ship the horns along various routes to their Asian destinations.

The reality of rhino poaching is a complex and sometimes heartbreaking story of mixed players in the game. Successfully addressing the various actors in the rhino horn war necessitates social overtures, persistent education and criminal prosecution. Future conservation needs to be a diverse, intense and intelligent drive if rhinos are to keep recovering in numbers. The rise of a massive Asian middle class has brought the desires of traditional medicine to the forefront of trade, resulting in the current constant war on the world’s rhinoceros.

The future survival of all rhino species hinges largely on two main approaches. It will take state of the art, military grade protection of rhinos on the ground, along with an intensive educational drive directed at consumer countries, notably China and Vietnam, as well as towards the local communities from where poachers are drawn. Only the slow changing of mindsets can enable a future where the currently intense pressure on rhinos can be relieved.

If a statistical gain is indicative of “winning” the war, then it’s fair to say that the good guys are on top right now. That rosy pronunciation, however, comes against the backdrop of consistently intense poaching pressure and an unabated demand from Asia. A great challenge too is the constant need for funding when, in Africa at least, authorities often have diverse pressing social situations to address. The current situation of organisations pushing for the maximum government contribution, while topping up from private coffers as needed, seems set to remain the model for rhino survival going forward.

L'articolo Are We Winning or Losing the War Against Rhino Extinction? proviene da InsideOver.