"While global attention is currently focused on COVID-19 and other zoonotic diseases that jump from animals to humans, diseases that breach the species barrier also pass from people and domestic animals to wild species.
Human alteration of the planet — the felling of forests, the legal and illegal wildlife trade, climate change, and other disruptions — is driving escalating unnatural interactions between species, allowing diseases to mutate and infect new hosts.
Infectious disease poses a serious threat to tigers, chimpanzees, Ethiopian wolves, African wild dogs and a host of other threatened species. Viral diseases spread by humans, livestock and other domestic animals could serve as the knockout punch to endangered species already teetering on the edge of extinction.
There’s growing support for a One Health strategy, which recognizes that human health, animal health and the health of the planet are inextricably linked — that protecting the planet is crucial to the health of all."
