KARACHI: It is time to connect the dots between wildlife trade, environmental degradation and risks to human health. Pakistan, like other regional countries, needs to take further stern measures to curb wildlife poaching and trafficking, the World Wide Fund for Nature-Pakistan (WWF-P) said on Tuesday.

The call was made in the backdrop of a report showing that over 90 per cent of respondents recently surveyed in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong supported a government-led closure of illegal and unregulated wildlife markets.

The report commissioned by the WWF (International), which included 5,000 participants from Hong Kong, Japan, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam [wildlife consumer countries], found that 82pc of respondents were extremely or very worried about the Covid-19 outbreak, with 93pc of respondents in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong supporting actions by their governments to eliminate illegal and unregulated wildlife trade markets.

‘Illegal wildlife markets provide a fertile environment for the spread of zoonotic diseases and their transmission to humans’

“Illegal and unregulated wildlife markets provide a fertile environment for the spread of zoonotic diseases and their transmission to humans, at times with fatal consequences,” said WWF-P director general Hammad Naqi Khan, adding that the recent outbreak of Covid-19 had brought the link between zoonotic diseases and wildlife markets into sharp focus.

The organisation, he said, had been monitoring illegal wildlife trade in Pakistan for a long time and the work indicated that there were several open markets in major cities of Pakistan dealing in illegal trade of wildlife, primarily meeting the pet trade demand.

“Animals on sale in such markets are often poached from their natural habitats and carry a great risk of spreading diseases,” he said, adding that Pakistan was a source and transit country for illegal consignments of various wildlife species.

According to Mr Khan, most of the wildlife species, including freshwater turtles and Indian pangolins illegally smuggled from Pakistan, are destined to the Asian consumer countries

Pathogens of zoonotic origin

While questions remain about the exact origins of Covid-19, the World Health Organisation has confirmed it is a zoonotic disease, ie that it has been transmitted from wildlife to humans.

The WHO reports that the current Covid-19 pandemic with at least 61pc of all human pathogens are zoonotic in origin and wildlife trade is an aggravating risk in the spread of zoonoses.

Other recent zoonotic epidemics, including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome and Ebola, have been traced to viruses that spread from animals to people.

“China has taken positive steps to prohibit the hunting, trade, transport and consumption of wild animals, and Vietnam is working along similar directives,” said Christy Williams, regional director of WWF’s Asia-Pacific programme.

“Other Asian governments must follow suit by closing their high-risk wildlife markets and ending this trade once and for all to save lives and help prevent a repeat of the social and economic disruption we are experiencing around the globe today.”

Published in Dawn, April 8th, 2020