The global wildlife trade, especially in illegal and live animal markets, is booming. But it has serious health risks. It drives the spread of diseases from animals to humans. This is said by a new joint study by the University of Freiburg (Germany) and the University of Lausanne (Switzerland). The danger of the wildlife trade goes beyond harm to nature.
Dangerous pathogens
The findings are in 'Science'. Traded mammals are more than 40% likely to harbor pathogens that infect humans. Species accumulate more shared pathogens the longer they remain in commerce. Close interactions between humans and wild animals create pathways for the spread of parasites and pathogens. They could trigger epidemics and pandemics.
The global wildlife trade encompasses hunting, farming, transportation, retail sales and pet keeping. It poses particularly high risks of transmitting pathogens from animals to humans. This trade has been linked to outbreaks ranging from HIV and Ebola to COVID-19 and chickenpox. The research explores the environmental and ecological factors that influence pathogen transmission and the dynamics of disease spread in the wildlife trade. 40 years of data on global wildlife trade were analyzed. They come from different international databases. They then linked this data to the CLOVER database, which catalogs more than 190,000 associations between mammals and pathogens. This way they could identify which species are known to share pathogens with humans.
High risks
Of the 2,079 mammal species involved in global trade, 41% shared at least one pathogen with humans. In comparison, only 6.4% of non-marketed species have it. Traded mammals are 1.5 times more likely to harbor pathogens transmissible to humans.
The danger of the wildlife trade makes interspecies transmission an inherent feature of this business. The species present in live animal markets and illegal trade are risky. They harbor more pathogens than those marketed exclusively as products or legally. Furthermore, the findings show that the length of time a species remains in trade further increases the risk. The authors found that, on average, each decade that a species is commercialized corresponds to an additional pathogen shared with humans.
Leave a Reply