The next pandemic could come from the Amazon rainforest, warns Brazilian ecologist David Lapola, who says human encroachment on animals’ habitats — a likely culprit in the coronavirus outbreak
Researchers say the urbanization of once-wild areas contributes to the emergence of zoonotic diseases — those that pass from animals to humans.
“The Amazon is a huge reservoir of viruses,” he told AFP in an interview. “We’d better not try our luck.”Last year, in far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s first year in office, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon surged 85 percent, to more than 10,000 square kilometers — an area nearly the size of Lebanon.
“When you create ecological disequilibrium… that’s when a virus can jump” from animals to humans, he said.Similar patterns can be seen with HIV, Ebola and dengue fever — “all viruses that emerged or spread on a huge scale because of ecological imbalances,” he said.
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