Further pandemics predicted if illegal wildlife trade continues

For centuries mankind has been plagued by zoonoses - diseases transmitted to us from animals. To name but a few: the infamous 1918 influenza pandemic that killed about 50 million people; HIV; Ebola; Malaria and of course Covid-19. What’s changed is that in recent years the frequency of outbreaks has increased.

Several new zoonotic diseases have emerged, and several known zoonoses, thought absent for decades, have come back to life.

“Exponential," is how Dr Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance describes the rise in global pandemics. “It follows closely the rise in population density around the world, our increasing dependence on the globalised trade and travel network for economic growth, and our increasing exploitation of nature,” says Dr Daszak. 

Daszak says coronaviruses come from bats, living in caves across South-East Asia, and that new viruses are being discovered at an alarming rate. “Working with our Chinese colleagues, we found over 780 new bat coronaviruses in China over the last 15 years. There’s a huge diversity! We don't know how many of these could become a pandemic, but we know that SARS is in there, we know that SARS-2 is in there, and there are many more to come if we don't do something about this,” says Daszak.

He continues: “People believe eating bats and pangolins gives you health and longevity, but in fact they make you ill and cause pandemics. It's a long-held belief that’s very tough to break.” But break it we must, and the health and economic crises of Covid-19 are starting to do just that.

Governments, particularly China, acted swiftly to change IWT policy and enforcement in the wake of Covid-19. Dr Lu Zhi, a Professor of Conservation Biology at Peking University, says she was surprised and encouraged at the groundswell support for China’s February ban on all wildlife food consumption. 

An online survey of 100,000 people, from February to March 2020, showed 90% were in support of the ban.

Dr Lu recognises that this overwhelming support will likely decline as the pandemic lessens its global grip, but she hopes the scale of Covid-19 leaves a lasting impression. “I think the scale and the intensity of this threat to human health is much bigger than SARS was. So, I think there might be a slight sliding after the pandemic finishes, but with repeated messaging and repeated education to younger generations, I think this willingness of reducing wildlife consumption will stand.”

China conducted an online survey of 100,000 people, from February to March, and 90% were in support of the ban on wild meat for eating.  

Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is an intergovernmental body within the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and is the global standard-setter for anti-money laundering and terrorist financing. Recently FATF decided to study the financial flows into the illegal wildlife trade and last month it published their first-ever global report on the trade. 

Read FATF IWT report here

David Fein, UfW’s Financial Taskforce Vice-Chair, drew attention to a specific area of the report which states that despite billions of dollars generated from IWT most efforts taken by countries today have rarely focused on the financial aspect of the crime. “We know that must change and I believe it will change especially with the FATF's recognition of IWT as a significant but overlooked financial crime.”

Fein went on to reiterate that the illegal wildlife trade is a major transnational organised crime that fuels corruption, threatens biodiversity, and can have significant public health impacts.

In Africa more elephants are now being poached than born each year, the numbers for rhinos, pangolins, lions, tigers and other endangered species are equally dire.

“Our mission is urgent- tens of thousands of elephants are killed each year with such tragic efficiency that in Asia elephants are gone from 85% of their historic range."

Fein added, "Conservationists have worked for years to provide the first line of defense against poachers, but the survival of the elephants and other endangered species shouldn't be left solely to conservationists in the field because they are up against a highly organised well-financed and transnational adversary.”

Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, reiterates that biological diversity is much more valuable than ticking off one’s animal count on a game drive.

“The present Covid-19 pandemic has served as a wake-up call and a reminder of the importance of biodiversity for our health and well-being."

Maruma Mrema says biodiversity loss narrows genetic and species diversity. "This leads to less resilience to disease of any kind thereby presenting a fundamental risk to the health and stable ecosystems that sustain all aspects of our societies. Illegal wildlife trade helps contribute to the loss of resilience.”