Lost forest fuels malaria

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http://www.nature.com/nsu/031124/031124-12.html

 

Lost forest fuels malariaConservation and medicine collide in the jungle.

28 November 2003

HELEN PEARSON

 

 

 

Destruction of the Amazon rainforest is opening the door to malaria-bearing

mosquitoes, researchers are warning. They hope to highlight how environmental

damage is fuelling human disease.

 

The team collected 15,000 mosquitoes swarming around a jungle road in northeast

Peru - and counted how many of these were Anopheles darlingi, the local species

that pumps the malarial parasite into human veins. Using satellite images, they

tallied these figures with the level of deforestation caused by farming and

villages.

 

Every 1% increase in deforestation boosts the number of A. darlingi by 8%,

conclude Jonathan Patz of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and

his team. A. darlingi may come to dominate other species because it thrives in

open, sunlit ponds, Patz suggests.

 

The finding might inform forest managers, Patz hopes. In this study, for

example, the insects ran wild once 30-40% of forest was destroyed. " Our goal is

to prevent [disease] as far upstream as possible, " he says.

 

Malaria expert Phil Lounibos of the University of Florida in Vero Beach agrees

that deforestation might boost A. darlingi swarms. But the species first surged

in the 1990s after the introduction of tropical fish farms, he points out: " The

whole problem wouldn't be so acute if this species wasn't imported. "

 

Field study

 

Patz is part of a burgeoning group of scientists studying the impact of

environmental damage on the health of animals and humans. Dubbed 'conservation

medicine', the field ranges from the impacts of pollution on cancer to the

contribution of global warming to amphibians' global demise.

 

Conservation medicine has gained new recognition after the recent outbreaks of

West Nile virus and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) - diseases that

crossed into humans partly because of our changing contact with animals. These

events " drive home the message " , says Peter Daszak, head of the Consortium for

Conservation Medicine, part the Wildlife Trust, a charity based in Palisades,

New York.

 

The consortium of five academic institutions - including Johns Hopkins

University - is pushing for more studies to inform conservation policy

decisions. Daszak himself is investigating whether urbanization or farming has

cut the diversity of birds and hence fuelled the spread of West Nile virus from

birds to humans.

 

Daszak and Patz are awaiting the 2005 release of a major report from the

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, convened by the United Nations. This group of

scientists is piecing together a picture of changing ecosystems and their

impacts on human health to inform policy-makers.

 

Meanwhile, a smaller milestone will come in March 2004 with the launch of the

field's own journal, EcoHealth, as well as an online forum for researchers

called ecohealth.net. " Everything we look at is common-sense, " sums up Daszak,

" but it's so massively overlooked it's unbelievable. "

 

 

© Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

 

 

 

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