Covid raged on — however nature offered hope

Nature noticed its ups and downs in 2021, and Conservation Information was there for all of it. This month, we’re revisiting among the most important tales of the previous 12 months. 

Because the COVID-19 pandemic raged on, many had been left asking the identical query: How can we forestall future illness outbreaks? In accordance with scientists, the secret is to guard nature. 

In 2021, Conservation Information lined how nature has helped communities keep afloat through the pandemic — and why conservation is important for public well being. Listed here are a few of our most-read tales of the 12 months. 

Dr. Neil Vora, an epidemiologist with Conservation Worldwide, has devoted his profession to chasing infectious illnesses — from Ebola-stricken villages in West Africa to the streets of New York Metropolis because the coronavirus pandemic tore by way of its communities. What he realized: Humanity’s continued assault on the surroundings may unleash one other pandemic — and shortly.

Learn extra right here. 

As governments map their highway to restoration from COVID-19, defending nature might be important to stopping the unfold of future zoonotic illness outbreaks, specialists say. Nonetheless, in an effort to restart their economies and create jobs, many international locations around the globe have both shrunk or eradicated areas put aside to guard nature — some to drill for fossil fuels, others for city growth, in keeping with Conservation Worldwide analysis. 

Learn extra right here.

The pandemic took lives — and livelihoods. However within the Alto Mayo Protected Forest, the place the Amazon rainforest meets the Andes, funds from carbon credit offered a lifeline for conservation — and the coffee-farming households who dwell within the forest. Conservation Information spoke to 1 espresso farmer about how his neighborhood’s cooperative was in a position to lower deforestation and obtain report gross sales, sparing them from a lot of the financial devastation that gripped Peru’s cities and cities.

Learn extra right here.

Even because the coronavirus unfold throughout Africa, native governments and communities within the Chyulu Hills of Southeast Kenya generated sufficient income to rent extra rangers to crack down on poaching — and made numerous different investments in their very own long-term meals safety, well being and well-being. How? By defending and restoring forests. 

Learn extra right here.

As deforestation within the Amazon rises, so does the danger of wildlife-to-human illness transmission, in keeping with a Conservation Worldwide examine. We spoke to Conservation Worldwide scientist Lee Hannah, the examine’s lead creator, in regards to the hyperlinks between infectious illness outbreaks and nature — and the way we are able to forestall the following pandemic from rising out of the world’s largest rainforest. 

Learn extra right here.

Cowl picture: Tree saplings at a nursery within the Alto Mayo Protected Forest, Peru (© Thomas Muller)