Preventing Future Pandemics Requires Sweeping U.S. Action on Wildlife Trade

May 19, 2020 / activist360 / Leave a comment

WASHINGTON— Conservation groups released a sweeping action plan today for the United States to dramatically crack down on wildlife trade, which is the most probable cause of the global coronavirus pandemic. Among other proposals, the action plan recommends that the United States end live wildlife imports, curtail all other wildlife trade until stricter regulations are adopted, and take a global leadership role in controlling wildlife trade to stop future pandemics.

Image of END WILDLIFE TRADE An Action Plan to Prevent Future Pandemics — END WILDLIFE TRADE An Action Plan To Prevent Future Pandemics

Over the past 40 years, most global pandemics — including HIV, SARS, Ebola and Zika — have been zoonotic, meaning that they jumped from wildlife to people. The coronavirus likely originated from a live wildlife market in China — potentially passed from a bat, to another animal, to a human. Wildlife markets typically sell many different types of live wildlife, including both legally and illegally sourced animals.

“If we’re going to avoid future pandemics, the United States and every other nation needs to do its part to stop the exploitation of wildlife.

…
“The loss of life and other devastating impacts of the coronavirus make it clear that the meager economic benefits of commodifying wildlife are simply not worth the risks.”
—Brett Hartl, Government Affairs Director at the Center for Biological Diversity

Irresponsible wildlife trade is a global problem. Importing more than 224 million live animals and 883 million other wildlife species every year, the United States is one of the world’s top wildlife importers. It also remains a common destination for illegally traded species. The United States and other nations have made only half-hearted efforts to address the impacts of wildlife trade and lack capacity to address trade effectively.

Today’s action plan, released by the Center for Biological Diversity and the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), proposes actions under four broader categories that Congress and federal agencies should implement to prevent future zoonotic pandemics:

Lead a global crackdown on wildlife trade;
Strengthen U.S. conservation laws to fight wildlife trade;
Invest $10 billion in U.S. and global capacity to stop wildlife trade, while helping communities transition to alternative livelihoods; and
Resume the U.S. position as a global leader in international wildlife conservation.

“This pandemic has made clear: wildlife trade is not only a threat to biodiversity—it’s also a threat to global public health.

…
“China’s response to the COVID-19 crisis took quick action to restrict wildlife trade. In contrast, the U.S. has failed to take a single step towards minimizing this threat. That should change now.”
—Elly Pepper, deputy director for International Wildlife Conservation at the NRDC

*Long-tailed pangolin (M. tetradactyla) by Brett Hartl / Center for Biological Diversity. Image is available for media use.*

Biodiversity loss, high rates of deforestation, and vast increases in agricultural development are leading to an increase in human encroachment into previously undisturbed habitat and contact with wildlife. As people move deeper into these last natural areas of the planet, scientists believe that infectious diseases will continue to emerge. Experts predict that new diseases will emerge from wildlife to infect humans somewhere between every four months and every three years.

###

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 3 million members and online activists. Since 1970, our lawyers, scientists, and other environmental specialists have worked to protect the world’s natural resources, public health, and the environment. NRDC has offices in New York City; Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Chicago; Bozeman, Montana; and Beijing.

Trees Will Save Our Planet

November 16, 2019 / activist360 / Leave a comment

Will trees save our planet? Trees and forests make the earth and climate livable and stimulate biodiversity. Yet we continue to cut trees on a large scale: last year twelve million hectares of forest disappeared. How do we deal with our ancient trees, and what else can we do?

Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author Annie Proulx wrote ‘Barskins,’ a monumental novel about the deforestation of North America in which settlers rush across the continent in a boundless hunger for more wood and money.

The grande dame of literature loves trees, perhaps more than people. She lives in the far west of the United States, in the Olympic Mountains outside of Seattle, which still has a small patch of a primeval forest. She tells us about her relationship with trees and the forest, and what we can learn from that. Proulx points to the balanced and respectful relationship that the original inhabitants of North America had – before the settlers came – and therefore advocates the expansion of wild, uncultivated forests.

The native inhabitants of America already knew that we could learn a lot from the trees and the forest. We portray Professor of Forest Ecology Robin Wall Kimmerer in the forest, where she researches with her students. It has its roots in the Potawatomi tribe. It combines its traditional origins with scientific methods to gain a better understanding of the place that we can occupy in the non-human world. She teaches her students to listen to what life forms have to tell us.

However, despite Proulx’s pointing finger, humanity is going on with cutting down trees, without listening to what that forest has to say to us. While doubling the number of forests alone could eliminate the damage caused to the atmosphere by the entire transport sector.

On Vancouver Island stands a lonely old douglas fir in the middle of a gigantic void. Here we tell the story of a Canadian lumberjack who came across this tree one day and couldn’t cut it down. The tree was so old and overwhelming that he decided to protect it. The ‘Big Lonely Doug,’ almost 100 meters high, was subsequently adopted by activist Ken Wu and his Ancient Forest Alliance and is the only one standing on a battlefield of felled trees.

In Canada, we visit tree researcher Suzanne Simard who investigated communication between trees against the scientific mores of her time. She received the cover of the leading scientific journal Nature, under the heading ‘Wood Wide Web.’ Simard exposed the complex systems in which trees talk and warn each other. She teaches us to see the forest as communities that are more related to us than you would say at first sight.

For Simard, life without trees is hell. We belong in Nature, and the notion that we are separate from it has put us in the situation that we are currently in.

Including Robin Wall Kimmerer (professor and forest biologist), Suzanne Simard (tree researcher), Annie Proulx (Pulitzer prize winner and bestselling author), and Gordon Hempton (acoustic ecologist).

Director: Tomas Kaan
Research: Henneke Hagen
Production: Olivier Schuringa
Commissioning Editors: Bregtje van der Haak & Doke Romeijn

Our Territory: Amazon Nature Climate Solutions

September 27, 2019 / activist360 / Leave a comment

Wildfires may grab headlines but indigenous peoples and local communities who depend the Amazon face many different threats. Not only are their territories targeted for illegal extractive activities such as gold mining and deforestation but without clear land titles their situation remains legally precarious.

But more than this – indigenous peoples and local communities offer a scalable, climate solution, as recently recognised in the UN IPCC Land Use report.

Protecting their rights will benefit communities, the Amazon itself and all of humanity.

In the Peruvian Amazon the community of Boca Parimanu, the Amahuaca peoples tread this difficult balance.

Madre de Dios, the most biodiverse region in the Peruvian Amazon, is home to 37 native communities. This southern region is also the most affected by illegal mining, more than 60 000 hectares of forest have been deforested by this activity.

Due to its high biodiversity and extension of Amazon forest, Madre de Dios is a key region for climate commitments and the fight against the climate crisis.

Made in partnership with FENAMAD, SPDA and Land Tenure Facility.