The well-known American writer David Kuiman once said: "There are 7....there are 7.7 billion people in the world, and we are hungry and greedy to consume resources, becoming a black hole in the center of the milky way, and everything sucks into us like gravity, including viruses." ”
In recent decades, there have been many environmental factors that have contributed to the rapid spread of epidemics, such as climate change that has altered the habitats of the host animals of these viruses, humans invading more and more primitive ecosystems, the frequency and speed of human migration, and overpopulation.
Overpopulation and human consumption of resources have exploded, beginning to encroach on the natural environment, causing ecological imbalance.
© blvdone / shutterstock.com
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The climate crisis could unleash ancient viruses unknown to humanity
The Svalbard glacier in Arctic Norway is melting due to climate change. © Christian Åslund / Greenpeace
Melting icebergs and glaciers can release very old and dangerous viruses. In January 2020, a team of scientists in China and the United States reported that they had traced as many as 33 viruses from 15,000-year-old ice, with samples from the Tibetan Plateau, 28 of which were unknown viruses. Traces of the Spanish virus have been found in Alaska, while DNA fragments of smallpox have been rediscovered in the permafrost of northeastern Siberia. Permafrost is the best environment to store bacteria and viruses, and it will not be until global warming frees them from freezing. In the summer of 2016, anthrax in Siberia killed a teenager and a thousand reindeer and infected dozens of people.
Relative to the harsh cold environment, on a warm planet, seasonal and geographical conditions are conducive to the spread of many diseases, whether it is viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites can find the ideal conditions to grow, spread and recombine.
Warm climates facilitate the growth, spread and recombination of viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites. © Michael Kunkel / Greenpeace
If the virus is spread across species caused by wild animals, coupled with the concentration of populations in large cities and the spread of globalization, the climate crisis could make the situation even more precarious. That is to say, viruses that were previously frozen in arctic and south Poles or Himalayan glaciers that we thought had been eradicated forever, but when they reappeared because of global warming, they became viruses that we did not recognize, which greatly increased the global public health risk.
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Humanity's wake-up call: three coronaviruses have appeared in less than two decades
Excessive logging has destroyed the ecology of primary forests and brought humans closer to the virus. © Daniel Beltrá / Greenpeace
In a 2007 report on 21st century health, the World Health Organization warned that the risk of viral epidemics is increasing and that the delicate balance between humans and microbes is affected by a variety of factors, including climate and ecosystem changes. Coronaviruses such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and middle eastern respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS) have demonstrated this, while examples that have not been eradicated more than a decade ago are HIV and Ebola.
Virologist Ilaria Capua explains that the spread of these new viruses is an inevitable response of nature to human attacks, and since 2016, he has led the Emerging Pathogens Institute of the University of Florida, reminding: "In less than two decades, three coronaviruses represent major wake-up calls." These phenomena are also related to changes in ecosystems: if the environment is destroyed, viruses will also face new hosts. In other words, destroying nature ultimately affects our health: "If people intervene in the ecosystem and destroy her, she will find a new balance." This often has uncontrollable consequences for humans. ”
The ecology of the chimpanzees is threatened by human invasion of African forests and their conversion to industrial agricultural uses. © Greenpeace / John Novis
David Kuiman explains this mechanism well in his book The Next Great Human Plague: The Deadly Contact of Cross-Species Infectious Diseases Invading Humans:
Different natural ecosystems are filled with many animals, plants and other species, each containing a unique virus;
Many of these viruses, especially those carried by wild mammals, can infect humans;
We are the most frequently invaded and altered natural ecosystems in human history, and as a result, we are exposed to new viruses;
When the virus "spillovers," it is transferred across species from non-human animal vectors to humans and adapts to human-to-human transmission.
Now the virus is like a lottery ticket, and it has 7.7 billion potential hosts to spread, who live in high densities and travel around the world."
The vast forest land in the Brazilian Amazon has been invaded by humans and destroyed ecological habitats due to illegal logging, illegal mining, destructive burning, and the establishment of large cattle farms. © Fábio Nascimento / Greenpeace
How big the earth is, how much risk the virus "spills" is. In the case of coronavirus, the focus is on China's jungle and local bat populations. But in the case of a recent pandemic, the virus may have been transmitted by other wildlife: palm owls, dromedary camels and primates, originating in deserts in the Middle East or tropical jungles in Africa, just as new illnesses could emerge from the Amazon River and Australia's forests. The deadly Ebola virus has also spread to humans due to cross-species transmission, and although the origin of the coronavirus remains uncertain, scientists are increasingly suspicious of bats: they are mammals like us, except they fly.
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Wildlife with nowhere to live
Whether it's icy or hot and humid, the human footprints are traveling to every corner of the planet in search of any resource worth exploiting. The potential risks of this process have previously been overlooked, and the coronavirus epidemic may be just the beginning. At the same time, the earth that nourishes all things has never been just the home of a species of human beings, but the impact of human beings on the earth is decisive.
Revelator reported that scientists recently announced that they had confirmed that the species was determined to become extinct in 2019. Before a species is declared officially extinct, scientists often have to track and analyze it for decades until it is truly confirmed that no trace of its life can be found again.
Experts stress that most extinctions occur in species that are not officially observed or named, often living in small habitats, vulnerable to pollution, destruction, invasive species or extreme weather events, many without even formal research by scientists.
1. Golden-crowned Hawaiian tree snail
（Source：DLNR）
The golden-capped Hawaiian tree snail (Achatinella apexfulva) is found only in the forests of Hawaii, Hawaii, usa (USA), and the earliest record dates back to the 1780s, when the number was very large. Due to the beautiful shell and characteristics, the snail became the first choice for making necklaces, and the large number of catches caused the population to drop sharply and gradually disappear into nature.
In 1997, the last 10 remaining golden-crowned Hawaiian tree snails were sent to the University of Hawaii for breeding, where they successfully hatched small tree snails, but eventually died one after another. The only remaining snail, George, survived to this day and passed away in January 2019 at the age of 14, declaring the species completely gone.
2. Knott's Leaf Picker
（Source：Macaulay Library）
Alagoas foliage-gleaner is endemic to Brazil, and the last human sighting was in 2011, and the main reason for their disappearance is the development of tropical rainforests – large areas of football-like forests are constantly being cut down, and it is extremely sad to grow other cash crops or provide paper and furniture markets.
In 2019, the IUCN officially classified the species as extinct.
3. Coral naked-tailed rats
（Source：State of Queensland / CC BY 3.0 AU）
The Coral Naked Tailed Rat (Melomys rubicola) is an Endemic Species of Australia that spreads over the vegetation reefs at the northern tip of the Great Barrier Reef, last discovered by researchers in 2009.
In 2019, the Australian government officially declared this species extinct, and it is the only mammal endemic to coral reefs, and the first mammal to become extinct due to climate change.
4. Chinese white sturgeon
▲ Chinese white sturgeon. （Source：Alneth / CC BY-SA）
Chinese white sturgeon (Psephurus gladius; Chinese paddlefish), also known as the Chinese swordfish, the biggest feature is like the strong appearance and characteristics of the sailfish, the contemporary due to the destruction of the living waters, the number is rare, so it is called "giant panda in the water".
The Chinese white sturgeon is considered to be one of the world's largest freshwater fish species, with a long history of survival, widely growing in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and has been recorded in many documents since ancient times. However, due to habitat destruction such as human overfishing and the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, in September 2019, the IUCN declared the species extinct.
5. Burren Spotted Stone Dragon
（Source：Earth Touch News Network）
The Boulenger speckled skink is a New Zealand endemic species that scientists describe as a "complete mystery", most notably after its first discovery and documentation, which has not been recorded for 130 years. Experts declared the species extinct in 2019, hoping to use this warning to raise the attention of others to other stone dragons.
6. Mushima Honey finches
（Source：U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Photographer Paul E. Baker?) / Public domain）
First discovered in Hawaii in 1973, the Po'ouli is a native species that lives only in Hawaii. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the number was only 150 in 1981, and then fell sharply by 90% in the next 10 years.
The main reason for the disappearance of the Makoshima honeyfinch is the loss of habitat after the rise of Hawaiian tourism, coupled with the invasion of wild boar predation, cat and mouse hunting, and the impact of disease, and attempts at conservation and artificial breeding have failed. According to the latest survey, the last sight of a Honeyfly on Mushima was in 2004. Scientists declared extinction in 2019.
7. Spotted turtle
（Source：National Geographic）
Rafetus swinhoei (Yangtze giant softshell turtle) is a freshwater turtle produced in the Yangtze river basin and the Red River Basin, is one of the world's largest turtles, with a history of 270 million years, but the long history is still unable to resist the destruction of habitat and indiscriminate fishing after human invasion, Chinese the traditional concept of the efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine has led to a large number of hunts, and there has been no wild trace since 1972.
In April 2019, the world's last female spotted turtle died in a zoo due to attempts at artificial insemination, representing that the turtle could no longer reproduce, and scientists then frozen ovarian tissue with liquid nitrogen, hoping that it would be possible to continue offspring through technological breakthroughs in the future. There are currently only 3 male spotted turtles left worldwide.