Coronavirus Must Be A Wake Up Call To Stop Wildlife Trafficking

What caused the coronavirus is now being researched. While no definitive conclusions have been reached, there is belief that the virus was transmitted from wildlife to humans. Some speculate that the virus originated in bats, while others speculate that the virus originated in pangolins or another animal.

This is an overcrowded world with many densely populated places that can facilitate the spread of disease. With much of the natural world and its biodiversity already decimated, the trade in wildlife should have long ago stopped.

The wildlife trade decimates wildlife. It provides for the transmission of diseases into the human population. In other cases, such as the killing and consumption of highly intelligent marine mammals like dolphins and whales, humans expose themselves to elevated levels of mercury, dioxins and other poisons by the consumption of these intelligent animals.

As the world gets more crowded, as wild places and wildlife continue to disappear, as species after species go extinct, there is no justification for a wildlife trade anywhere.

Bringing animals that belong in the forests and elsewhere into crowded markets so that humans can eat exotic flesh, or create products from wildlife that have no medicinal value despite false claims as to otherwise, is nothing but a recipe for what is unfolding before our eyes from the coronavirus.