While emerging human diseases such as Ebola have grabbed headlines in recent years, similar diseases in wildlife have been understudied, and few regulations concerning exotic-disease threats to wild animals, or systems for surveillance, are in place to prevent their spread. The problem has largely been ignored by policy makers and the threat these wildlife diseases pose to humans, directly or indirectly, should be taken far more seriously. A report on the scope of the problem was published this past month in the journal Science. Daszak's co-authors were Andrew Cunningham of the Zoological Society of London and Alex Hyatt of the Australian Animal Health Laboratory.
Human history is filled with the catastrophic consequences of emerging infectious diseases.
The introduction of smallpox, typhus and measles by European colonizers in the 15th and 16th centuries resulted in a staggering 50 million deaths among native South Americans. Despite suspicions that imported diseases may have had similar effects on wildlife, systematic studies of emerging infectious diseases of wild animals and their effect on human populations have been few and far between. That neglect changed with the discovery that wild animals can act as natural reservoirs for diseases that can be extremely virulent among humans. Whatever the reason, these diseases have spread just as human diseases did. For example, avian malaria on Hawaii is thought to have caused the extinction of a number of native species and was originally introduced with exotic, alien birds.