Natural environment must be protected to avoid future

Natural environment must be protected to avoid future global pandemics, research New York: Protecting and restoring the natural environment must be done if future global pandemics are to be avoided, a new study has stressed. A study published in the scientific journal Nature suggests that due to inadequate food sources, animals leave their habitats and are at risk of spreading diseases to livestock and humans. Scientists from Cornell University in the US, who authored the study, studied fruit bats, a type of bat in Australia, between 1996 and 2020 to understand the risks of disease transmission from one animal to another. According to researchers, every global pandemic since the 1990s has been caused by the transfer of pathogens from animals to humans, with two main factors. The first is the loss of habitat for these animals due to which animals migrate to agricultural areas and the second is food shortage due to climate change. Raina Plowright, a professor at Cornell University, said in a statement that the world's attention is now on how we can prevent the next global pandemic. Unfortunately the idea of preserving or restoring nature is not discussed. In years when food was abundant in winter, the researchers observed that bats stayed away from humans in their native forests. During food shortages, bats moved closer to agricultural areas and humans where they could spread more viruses.