Next pandemic could start from the Amazon rainforest, warns Brazilian ecologist David Lapolla, who says human intrusion on animals’ territories — a likely culprit in the coronavirus outbreak — is soaring there because of rampant deforestation.
Researchers state the urbanization of amazon, contributes to the emergence of zoonotic diseases — those that pass from animals to people.
That covers the new coronavirus, which scientists think originated in bats before passing to humans in China’s rapidly urbanizing Hubei province, probably via a third species.
Lapolla, 38, who studies how the human activity will reshape the coming ecosystems of tropical forests, tells the same processes are in play in the Amazon.
The world’s most significant rainforest is disappearing at an alarming rate. 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 (3,900 square miles) — an area nearly the size of Lebanon.
