In this post:
Why are all these viruses connected to Animals?,
5 years ago: Bill Gates said this would happen!,
The scientific link between the pandemic and biodiversity,
2 years ago: The Next Plague Is Coming. Is America Ready?,
Who is working to save Bio Diversity?
In very clear detail some examples of what this means to Humans!
…a list at the bottom of other posts on important issues
Above image: Israel Lockdown: Jackals Are Taking Over Tel Aviv’s Main Park; Haaretz photographer Ofer Vaknin (see below)
Bio-Diversity
Threatened Habitat = threatened Bio-diversity = threatened planet Earth
The Pope: coronavirus pandemic could be nature’s response to climate crisis
“We did not respond to the “partial catastrophes”. Who now speaks of the fires in Australia, or remembers that 18 months ago a boat could cross the North Pole because the glaciers had all melted? Who speaks now of the floods?” the Pope said.
New Research Links Air Pollution to Higher Coronavirus Death Rates
WASHINGTON — Coronavirus patients in areas that had high levels of air pollution before the pandemic are more likely to die from the infection than patients in cleaner parts of the country, according to a new nationwide study that offers the first clear link between long-term exposure to pollution and Covid-19 death rates.
Why are all these viruses connected to Animals?
Bird flu – Avian influenza, known informally as avian flu or bird flu, is a variety of influenza caused by viruses adapted to birds. Bird flu is similar to swine flu, dog flu, horse flu and human flu as an illness caused by strains of influenza viruses that have adapted to a specific host.
Swine Flu – Swine influenza is an infection caused by any one of several types of swine influenza viruses… that is endemic in pigs. If transmission does cause human flu, it is called zoonotic swine flu. People with regular exposure to pigs are at increased risk of swine flu infection. It is estimated that in the 2009 flu pandemic 11–21% of the then global population (of about 6.8 billion), or around 700 million to 1.4 billion people, contracted the illness—more in absolute terms than the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.
SARS – Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a viral respiratory disease of zoonotic origin that surfaced in the early 2000s…. In late 2017, Chinese scientists traced the virus through the intermediary of civet animals to cave-dwelling horseshoe bats in Yunnan province. No cases of the first SARS-CoV have been reported worldwide since 2004.
MERS – Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), also known as camel flu, is a viral respiratory infection which infects humans, bats, and camels, caused by the MERS-coronavirus (MERS-CoV). Symptoms include fever, cough, diarrhea
and shortness of breath. The disease is typically more severe in those with other health problems. Mortality is about one-third of diagnosed cases.
SARS-2 – In 2019, a related virus strain, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), was discovered. This new strain causes COVID-19, a disease which brought about the ongoing 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic.
They have been warning us for years and we have not been listening.
5 years ago: Bill Gates said this would happen!
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Do you feel it? As you wait at home to be released.
Do you feel it? This is something bigger than just another winter cold.
Who has caused this total interruption of Human life?
>>>>>>> Humans >>>>>>> Room for more Humans
As in everything connected to the changes, Humans are the cause……
And WASTE, comes into view…………
Destroying Bio-diversity causes waste.
Bio-Diversity
If the Cause is Humans………….We can fix it!
But First We MUST Understand it!
Video from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), 6 May 2019
The link between the coronavirus pandemic and biodiversity loss
03/29/2020
Dear TiME (This is My Earth) Supporters,
We hope that you are staying healthy during this most uncertain time.
Coronaviruses, discovered in the late 1960s, are a group of related viruses that cause diseases in mammals and birds. (this includes Humans) They are one of the viruses responsible for the common cold in humans, but they can also cause more severe respiratory illnesses, as we are now witnessing.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is genetically similar to bat coronaviruses, leading scientists to speculate that SARS-CoV-2 jumped from bats to humans in a mechanism known as zoonotic transmission.
Nevertheless, bats are not to blame for this pandemic — the only species responsible are humans, who have destroyed and continue to destroy huge swathes of wildlife habitat.
Habitat loss is one of the biggest threats facing plants and animal species throughout the world. According to the World Wildlife Fund, habitat destruction is identified as a main threat to 85 percent of all species described in the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.
Habitat destruction not only impacts individual species but also the health of the global ecosystem. Human encroachment on the habitats of wild species have created countless ripple effects, including the increase of microbial spread from animals to humans.
Human-led habitat destruction, fragmentation or degradation has created the opportunity for microbes living in other species to be exposed and adapt to the human body. Affected wildlife species are forced to live in smaller and smaller fragments of their remaining habitat, allowing for repeated exposure to humans.
When the microbes that have evolved to live in a particular species repeatedly engage with our species, their ability to crossover (transmit between species) is heightened and deadly human pathogens that our immune systems have not yet encountered are created.
In addition to habitat destruction, the wildlife trade and factory farming are other ways humans facilitate the transfer of microbes that could potentially endanger humans.
Our mass-production approach to animal husbandry means that we pack huge numbers of animals into cages and boxes. The stress of the experience increases the shedding of viruses and other microbes, and the close contact to other animals and humans increases the likelihood of crossover.
The wildlife trade also brings together species that would never otherwise have come into contact in their natural habitats, thus offering another opportunity for the potential evolution and crossover of microbes. …
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2 years ago: science writer Ed Yong wrote an article for The Atlantic in which he warned that a new global pandemic was inevitable……………….
The Next Plague Is Coming. Is America Ready?
The epidemics of the early 21st century revealed a world unprepared, even as the risks continue to multiply. Much worse is coming.
“New neighborhoods have sprung up. In one of them, I walk through a market, gazing at delectable displays of peppers, eggplants, avocados, and goat meat. Pieces of salted fish sell for 300 Congolese francs—about the equivalent of an American quarter. Juicy white grubs go for 1,000. And the biggest delicacy of all goes for 13,000—a roasted monkey, its charred face preserved in a deathly grimace.
The monkey surprises me. Emery Mikolo, a 55-year-old Congolese man with a wide, angular face who survived his own encounter with Ebola in 1995, is surprised to see only one. Usually, he says, these stalls are heaving with monkeys, bats, and other bushmeat, but rains the night before must have stranded any hunters in the eastern forests. As I look around the market, I picture it as an ecological magnet, drawing in all the varied animals that dwell within the forest—and all the viruses that dwell within them.
The Congo is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world. It was here that HIV bubbled into a pandemic, eventually detected half a world away, in California. It was here that monkeypox was first documented in people. The country has seen outbreaks of Marburg virus, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, chikungunya virus, yellow fever. These are all zoonotic diseases, which originate in animals and spill over into humans. Wherever people push into wildlife-rich habitats, the potential for such spillover is high. Sub-Saharan Africa’s population will more than double during the next three decades, and urban centers will extend farther into wilderness, bringing large groups of immunologically naive people into contact with the pathogens that skulk in animal reservoirs—Lassa fever from rats, monkeypox from primates and rodents, Ebola from God-knows-what in who-knows-where.
On average, in one corner of the world or another, a new infectious disease has emerged every year for the past 30 years: mers, Nipah, Hendra, and many more. Researchers estimate that birds and mammals harbor anywhere from 631,000 to 827,000 unknown viruses that could potentially leap into humans. Valiant efforts are under way to identify them all, and scan for them in places like poultry farms and bushmeat markets, where animals and people are most likely to encounter each other. Still, we likely won’t ever be able to predict which will spill over next; even long-known viruses like Zika, which was discovered in 1947, can suddenly develop into unforeseen epidemics.
Bio-Diversity – So many people have not made the connection.
Coronavirus: Putting the spotlight on the global wildlife trade
6 April 2020 – … Prof Dirk Pfeiffer of City University of Hong Kong says the real issue is demand. “The people who are providing them, whether that’s farmed wild animals or animals from the wild, that’s an important source of income for them. Pushing it underground, that’s not the solution, so it needs to be a phased process.” (We humans have to stop wanting to buy these animals.)
Poachers Kill More Rhinos as Coronavirus Halts Tourism to Africa
8 April, 2020 – While poaching is not unusual in Africa — the last decade has seen more than 9,000 rhinos poached — conservationists said the recent incidents in Botswana and South Africa were unusual because they occurred in tourism hot spots that, until now, were considered relatively safe havens for wildlife.
National lockdowns, border closures, emergency visa restrictions, quarantines and other measures put in place to stop the spread of the coronavirus have severely constricted Africa’s $39 billion tourism industry. That business motivates and funds wildlife conservation across the continent, leading some experts to fear that threatened and endangered animals may become additional casualties of the pandemic.
Brawling Monkeys. Wandering Deer. Blame Coronavirus.
16 March, 2020 – At popular tourist stops in Thailand and Japan, some creatures are going hungry because visitors haven’t been turning up to feed them. … “The best thing we can do for these animals is to leave them alone,” Dr. Schell said. When people feed wildlife in urban environments, they inadvertently create high densities of animals where otherwise they would not be supported.
Israel Lockdown: Jackals Are Taking Over Tel Aviv’s Main Park
6 April, 2020 – Roughly 10 families of jackals have been living in Hayarkon Park for the past decade. They reached the area of the park known as Sheva Tahanot (Seven Mills) from further east along the Yarkon River in search of food and have acclimated to living around people. Until recently, scraps of food in the park were plentiful, left behind by visitors from their barbecuing.
But since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, most Israelis are confined to their homes and the country’s parks and beaches have been closed. Recent reports attest to the fact that Yarkon Park’s jackals have taken to the trails in the park with greater confidence, but they may also be worrying about where everyone has gone with their food.
Don’t Blame Bat Soup for the Coronavirus
Racist memes target Chinese eating habits, but the real causes of the virus are more mundane.
27 January, 2020 – If the fallout from the Wuhan outbreak changes anything for the better, it may be that it gives a vital push to reform and more teeth to regulation. But as with so many past disasters in China, it could also mean a brief period of change before profits and power take precedence once again. Whatever happens, amid the current moment of fear and panic, support for the Chinese public will make a bigger difference than culinary judgments or racism.
Animal Viruses Are Jumping to Humans. Forest Loss Makes It Easier.
9 April, 2020 – … While the researchers expected to see the highest contact near the most robust habitat and densest primate populations, they found the opposite: Dwindling islands of forest, left as people moved in around wild primates, led to more interactions between humans and primates. People ventured into the forest in search of wood for construction or food, and monkeys and chimpanzees ventured out to feast on crops.
“They were able to measure it explicitly, which was great,” said Sadie J. Ryan, an associate professor of medical geography at the University of Florida who did not participate in the Stanford study.
This is on top of Omicron that the world is infected with right now: December, 2021
Israel’s Bird Flu Outbreak
Is a Wholly Man-made Disaster
December, 2021 – 5,000 [migrating] cranes have died at Hula Lake and the number is sure to double. Greed for tourism income led to overfeeding and overcrowding, and now to illness and death
Grim cleanup of [migrating] cranes
that died of bird flu begins in Hula Valley Reserve–
Agriculture Ministry appeals to residents of northern moshav at epicenter of H5N1 outbreak to keep stray cats — potential carriers of virus — from wandering around poultry sheds
The World Organization for Animal Health reported on November 10, 2021 that 41 countries, in Asia (11), Europe (21), and Africa (9), had reported avian influenza in wild birds and domestic poultry since May 1, with the H5N1 variant occurring frequently.
Bird flu outbreak spreads to organic farm in northern Israel
H5N1 virus infects 5,500 chickens in the community of Barak; Agriculture Ministry says it’s concerned about human infection.
In the community of Margaliot, more than half a million egg-laying chickens have died or been culled. All the poultry sheds are infected and have been sealed off by inspectors.
Avian flu killing birds in Israel
could jump to humans, warns epidemiologist
Prof. Amnon Lahad calls prospect of virus crossing species ‘very concerning,’ as Health Ministry advises Israelis to avoid sick birds and not to buy unregulated chicken, eggs
And we are transmitting the virus BACK to other Mammals?
Bronx Zoo Tiger Is Sick With the Coronavirus
7 April, 2020 – Several other tigers and lions have also exhibited symptoms of Covid-19, according to federal officials.
Who is working to preserve Bio Diversity?
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Who is working to save these important places on planet Earth.
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Type the word “Biodiversity” and “the name of your country” into Google and I am quite sure you will find at least 2-4 organizations via your country working on the conservation of biodiversity somewhere in the world.
Human Population in proportion to Biodiverse Regions
TECHNICAL NOTES – This map shows the land surface resized by its population overlaid with data about biodiversity hotspot regions. Each transformed grid cell in the map is proportional to the total number of people living in that area. The Grey areas are proportional to the Human populations in those areas. The colorful areas are the threatened biodiverse areas we need to save.
Data sources: This map uses population estimates for the year 2020 based on data from the Gridded Population of the World (GPW), v4 at 0.25 degree resolution, released by SEDAC (Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center). The map overlay is based on data by Conservation International provided at Spatial-Analyst (accessed 2012).
Diversity – biological and social, linguistic and cultural diversity – is central to sustainable development and human welfare. It also is key to resilience – the ability of natural and social systems to adapt to change. Biodiversity therefore is an integral part of the diversity of our lives, linking the human and physical environments of our planet. The hotspots of biodiversity identified by Conservation International aim to draw a picture of the richest and the most threatened reservoirs of plant and animal life on earth.
The map shows a gridded population cartogram which gives equal space to each person living on this planet. It shows the most threatened unique ecosystems in proportion to human populations. This gives one insight into the immediate human impact on these vulnerable areas of the world’s biosphere.
Supporting civil society in Biodiversity Hotspots
2018 – There are 36 biodiversity hotspots globally: biologically rich but threatened terrestrial ecosystems, which are exceptional due to their high number of unique species and because each has lost at least 70 % of its original vegetation. The hotspots also provide services vital to human wellbeing (clean air and water, flood and climate control and soil regeneration).
In 2000, a fund was set up to safeguard the 29 hotspots situated in developing and transitional countries. The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) provides grants to civil society – NGOs, communities, indigenous groups, private sector and academic institutions – to protect biodiversity, build conservation leadership and nurture sustainable development. Since it began, CEPF has provided grants to over 2 200 civil society organisations and individuals for biodiversity conservation projects.
If you want to take a little time to understand what is happening in our natural world, Ferris Jabr, has described in very clear detail some examples of what this means to us now……………….
How Humanity Unleashed a Flood of New Diseases
worth a complete read!
FERRIS JABR
June 17, 2020 – It might have started like this: One afternoon last year, somewhere in China’s mountainous Yunnan province, a hunter entered a limestone cave. …
…
.[For example…].. In more than two decades of research, ecologists Felicia Keesing and Richard Ostfeld have discovered that the abundance of certain forest mammals predicts the size of tick populations the following year and the risk of Lyme disease for people who live nearby. When larval ticks hatch, they do not yet carry the corkscrew-shaped Borrelia bacteria that cause Lyme disease; they acquire the pathogens from the wide array of small creatures on which they feed. For reasons of physiology and behavior, the probability that one of these animals will transmit Borrelia to a tick varies immensely. Some species seem to have especially strong immune reactions to ticks, killing them before they can finish feasting. Others thwart parasites with fastidious grooming: An opossum might dispose of more than 5,000 ticks in a single week, while a mouse removes only 50. White-footed mice are by far the most tolerant of ticks and the most likely to spread Borrelia bacteria, infecting about 90 percent of ticks that feed on them. Wherever white-footed mice multiply, so does the threat of Lyme disease.
…
… In fragmented wilderness, where many creatures cannot survive and species diversity is low, white-footed mice populations boom and infect huge numbers of ticks with the bacteria that cause Lyme, escalating the risk to humans. Conversely, in high-diversity areas, populations of white-footed mice are constrained by numerous competitors and predators, most of which are far less likely to infect ticks with Borrelia, mitigating the risk of spillover, a phenomenon known as the dilution effect. [In other words; more space = more species diversity = less chance of one animal over populating and spreading something.]
Pope Francis presides over a moment of prayer on the sagrato of St Peters Basilica in the evening of March 27, 2020 to an empty gathering. Rome, Italy
Pope Francis has said the coronavirus pandemic is one of “nature’s responses” to humans ignoring the current ecological crisis.
…
“The outbreak offers an opportunity to slow down the rate of production and consumption and to learn to understand and contemplate the natural world.” …
The Pope encouraged those in a lockdown to find creative ways of being at home.
“Take care of yourselves for a future that will come.”
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Bio-Diversity
COVID 19 and Recovery posts:
COVID-19 >>> WE CAN COPE
Our Link To COVID 19 = Shrinking Bio-Diversity
Horrific Disruptive – Economic Opportunity!
How To Finance Your Own “Green” Recovery – 8 Tips For Small Businesses
Have You Been RE-THINKING Your Business?
Recycling Grants/Funding For Waste Plastic
What Makes An Economy Circular? Decompose To New Life !
EMF Accelerating The Circular Economy Transition
All the Job posts above have been updated. You can also find them all in:
Job Vacancies In Green Companies < More Now !
Burned Out? Color Your Future Green! With Planet Earth
What Is A Green Job? Green And Other Colors.
the individual job posts:
Green Recovery – Jobs & Money – Where?
8 Green Companies To Work For With Job Vacancies #2
5+ Green Companies To Work For With Jobs Vacancies #3
12+ Green Companies To Work For With Job Vacancies – Green, Yellow & Blue #4
Another 12+ Green Companies With Job Vacancies – Now – #5
13+ More Green Companies With Job Vacancies NOW #6
10+ More Green Companies With Job Vacancies NOW #7
Another 14+ Green Companies with Job Vacancies NOW #8
16+ Green Companies To Work For – Job Vacancies NOW #9
17+ More Green Companies To Work For – September 2020 #10
Another 14+ Green Companies To Work For – Job Vacancies #11
Now Hiring! Indeed! 15+ Green Companies With Jobs #12
Think positive. Keep happy