COVID-19 highlights risks of wildlife trade

International research team including Göttingen University makes urgent call for more effective wildlife trade legislation. Many diseases, such as COVID-19, have made the jump from animals to people with serious consequences for the human host. An international research team, including researchers from the University of Göttingen, says that more epidemics resulting from animal hosts are inevitable unless urgent action is taken. In order to protect against future pandemics which might be even more serious, they call for governments to establish effective legislation addressing wildlife trade, protection of habitats and reduction of interaction between people, wildlife and livestock. Their review was published in Trends in Ecology & Evolution. An infectious disease caused by a pathogen - such as a bacterium, virus or parasite - that has jumped from an animal to a human is known as -zoonosis-. In the last thirty years, the majority of human pathogens which have caused substantial damage to human health and economies have originated from wildlife or livestock.