Tying Animal Health to Natural Wealth

It’s not just the paper kind of green that makes the world go round. There’s an equally vital resource growing scarcer by the moment: space—verdant, abundant wilderness. As the tide of development swells, and our planet’s natural resources are consumed at a ravenous pace, we are all affected. To wildlife health scientists, the greatest consequence of our continuously shrinking world is that wildlife, domestic animals, and people are coming into contact like never before. The resulting emerging disease threats lurk in plain sight—in human settlements that encroach on savannas and forests; in markets, where wild and domesticated species kept in close proximity risk exposure to pathogens like SARS and avian influenza; and even on farms, where wild species may come into direct or indirect contact with huge numbers of their domestic cousins. Global public health, agriculture, commerce, and conservation are all put at risk. To address the challenges of containing these threats, experts from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) emphasize that economic progress demands sustained improvements in health for people, their domestic animals, and the environment.

As part of its “One World, One Health” initiative, WCS has begun work in Africa to help catalyze a new approach to addressing diseases that move between livestock, wildlife, and, sometimes, people. At the 2003 World Parks Congress in Durban, South Africa, WCS and the World Conservation Union (IUCN) Species Survival Commission Veterinary Specialist Group tapped into some of the most innovative conservation thinking on the continent today. Veterinarians, ecologists, biologists, economists, agriculturalists, and wildlife managers from across East and southern Africa came together to share ideas on how wildlife conservation and development efforts can be compatible. The resultant WCS/IUCN book, Conservation and Development Interventions at the Wildlife/Livestock Interface: Implications for Wildlife, Livestock and Human Health, and WCS’s related AHEAD (Animal Health for the Environment And Development) initiative focus on several themes of critical importance to the future of wildlife, animal agriculture, and people. Among these are competition over grazing and water resources, disease transmission, local and global food security, zoonoses, and other potential sources of conflict related to land-use decision-making and the reality of resource constraints.

Confronting these subjects, the book’s editors and contributors urge, is of critical importance to Africa’s people, wildlife heritage, and global trading partners. For regional development and conservation strategies to succeed, they must address animal health issues and their implications for human health and livelihoods. Moreover, given similar emerging health threats the world over, the book should not be considered as only a regional study of Africa-specific issues. The scope of its readership, like the health strategy it promotes, should be borderless.

To order a hard copy of Conservation and Development Interventions at the Wildlife/Livestock Interface, email books@iucn.org. The publication is also available for free download in a PDF format at wcs-ahead.org

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