14. Wildlife and Public Health

Question 1

Structure of the lecture

Answer 1

1. Public health is comprised of many factors that interact with nature
2. OneHealth: Understanding wildlife threats to public health
3. Case study: Malaria and fishing nets
4. Case study: The global meat market and wildlife trade
5. Case study: COVID-19 and the wild meat market
6. Solutions

Question 2

Define public health

1.1

Answer 2

The science of disease preventing, life extension and health promotion

Question 3

What are the five main concerns of public health?

1.2

Answer 3

1. Food security and nutrition
2. Health inequalities
3. Mental health
4. Disease prevention
5. Environmental improvements

Question 4

What is the purpose of OneHealth?

2.1

Answer 4

OneHealth is used to frame zoonotic disease in terms of hazard, exposure and vulnerability, aiming to understand the complex and intimate relationship between nature and human health

Question 5

How does wildlife fit into the OneHealth framework?

2.2

Answer 5

At least 60% of human diseases emerge from animals, and of this, 35% come from farm animals, and 65% from wildlife. There has been an increase in zoonotic disease over time, and increasing specificity towards humans

Question 6

How does OneHealth aim to understand the link between environmental change and public health?

2.3

Answer 6

Land conversion has a negative impact on health, leading to conditions like acute respiratory disease, diarrhoea and fever.

Many hotspots for zoonotic disease occur in the global tropics, particularly around areas of deforestation

Question 7

Give some recent examples of zoonotic disease

2.3

Answer 7

1. Nipah virus from fruit bats to pigs to humans in 1999
2. SARS from civets in 2003
3. MERS from bats to camels in 2012

Question 8

What is mosquito net fishing (MNF) and how can we use it to understand public health/wildlife trade-offs?

3.1

Answer 8

Mosquito-net fishing involves using the bed nets handed out by the WHO for fishing, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. It provides high yields of small fish. It has rapidly increased since 2007.

Question 9

What are some of the environmental consequences of MNF?

3.2

Answer 9

CONS

• Release of mosquito insecticides into the water
• Depleting small fish populations
• Creation of excess, non-disposable plastics

PROS
* Appears to be commensurate with other methods in terms of yield and sustainability
* These fish were not yet being exploited, so isn’t exascerbating an existing issue

Question 10

What are some of the health consequences of MNF?

3.3

Answer 10

PROS
* Increased nutrients for children

CONS
* Trading-off food over malarial protection
* Leaching insecticides and pesticides

Question 11

What are some of the social consequences of MNF?

3.4

Answer 11

PROS
* Providing jobs for women within communities
* Instigated a small-fish market that provides jobs
* Easily available
* Low expense
* No skill is needed
* Solves the ‘poverty trap’ of individuals who cannot afford proper fishing gear

Question 12

What are some the policy-level solutions for MNF?

3.5

Answer 12

Providing fishing gear that does not leach insecticides or microplastics

Question 13

How is wild-meat hunting of economic importance?

4.1

Answer 13

• Provision of trade to local individuals
• Supporting restaurants, shops, traditional medicine practitioners
• Important component of household economies
• Source of protein (less stress on other nutrition and medical costs)
• Cash for poor and rural communities
• Major employer

Question 14

What is the social importance of the wild-meat trade?

4.2

Answer 14

Highly diverse functions
Food, medicine, ornaments, traditional shops, captive-breeding, importing etc.,

Question 15

Diversity of the wild-meat trade

4.3

Answer 15

Particular use of wild-dog, deer, junglefowl, wild rabbit, porcupine, civets, turtle, pangolins etc., Around 19% of the population rely on Saiga horn for ‘heatiness’

Question 16

How is wild-meat hunting harming indigenous communities?

4.4

Answer 16

Large-scale commercial hunting, snaring and exploitation is highly damaging to indigenous communities. Removes their preferred/traditional/ancestral food sources, and encroaches on their territory. Removes a form of potential trade

Question 17

How can we understand the impact of wild-meat by studying Northern Ghana?

4.5

Answer 17

Many local communities are heavily reliant on frogs as a source of food. Frog species appear to be relatively healthy on a long distance. Wild-meat might not be so damaging on an individual/local level

Question 18

How might COVID-19 have been impacted by the wildlife-trade?

5.1

Answer 18

Many wild-life groups attributing wildlife trade and consumption of pangolins and bats to COVID-19, citing stressed and cramped conditions as the primary causes for this pandemic

Question 19

How is the assumption that COVID-19 is linked to the wildlife trade biased/unfair/inaccurate?

5.2

Answer 19

Common to frame the global East as ‘behind’, and blame wildlife consumption for our pandemics. However, social inequality at the hands of the global West is a large contributing factor to this.

Question 20

What are 5 potential solutions to the global wild-life trade?

6

Answer 20

1. Removal of wildmeat/total bans
2. Banning trade only, for public health reasons
3. Strong regulation, with farmed trade only
4. Regulated trade for sustainability
5. Let rip

Question 22

Pros/Cons of total bans of wildmeat consumption

5.1

Answer 22

PROS
* Improved conservation outcomes
* Improved zoonotic disease outcomes

CONS
* Immense land-use change: Due to an increase in dometic farming
* Poorly enforced bans that encourage illegal trade: Wild meat becomes more desirable/coveted
* Food insecurity: Particularly in LICs, which would have knock-on public health impacts on malnutrition

Question 23

Pros/Cons of banning wild-meat trade for public health reasons?

5.2

Answer 23

PROS
* Conservation impact is varied/uncertain, but likely to be better than total bans
* Decrease in disease transmission

CONS
* Decline in livelihoods since individuals are reliant on trade

Question 24

Pros/Cons of only allowing farmed wild-meat animal trade?

5.3

Answer 24

PROS
* Improvements to animal welfare, since more humane conditions could be enforced (in theory, but this is unlikely in practise)
* Improvements for conservation since individuals would be captive bred and not removed from the wild
* Limited zoonotic issues
* Captive breeding could provide livelihoods for many

CONS
* Land-use conversion for farms

Question 25

Pros/Cons of regulating wildlife trade from a sustainability POV?

5.4

Answer 25

PROS
* Animals sold dead, so improvements for disease tansmission
* Harvest moderately sustainable
* Important source of protein
* Major source of livelihood