Posted on 10/04/2014 3:00:45 PM PDT by Lorianne
The Ebola epidemic in West Africa may have surprised most of the medical establishment – this is the first such outbreak in the region – but the risk had been steadily rising for at least a decade. The risk had grown so high, in fact, that this outbreak was almost inevitable and very possibly predictable.
All that was needed was to see the danger was a bat’s eye view of the region. Once blanketed with forests, West Africa has been skinned alive over the last decade. Guinea’s rainforests have been reduced by 80%, while Liberia has sold logging rights to over half its forests. Within the next few years Sierra Leone is on track to be completely deforested.
This matters because those forests were habitat for fruit bats, Ebola’s reservoir host. With their homes cut down around them, the bats are concentrating into the remnants of their once-abundant habitat. At the same time, mining has become big business in the region, employing thousands of workers who regularly travel into bat territory to get to the mines.
Fruit bats carry the Ebola virus, but generally don’t die from it. The virus could easily have migrated from Central to West Africa inside them in much the same way that birds spread West Nile virus across North America: passing it among flocks during seasonal migrations.
Although bats have long been on the menu in West Africa, there are other transmission routes for the virus besides bushmeat. It is conceivable the two-year-old boy in Guinea thought to be the first case in this outbreak was infected after eating bat-contaminated fruit. This mode of transmission may also explain how the disease gets into wild gorilla populations.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
MM MM MM FRUIT BAT SOUP
This sounds like a big problem. Are they supposed to stop eating?
On the other hand, clearing the forest and BURNING IT DOWN might eliminate it altogether.
And if the fruit bat were threatened with extinction, you’d have all manner of lefties fighting tooth and nail to save the species.
It looks like anyone from anywhere can buy these bats.. online.
“We can’t stop here. This is bat country!”
And so would not being a bunch of depraved filth mongers.
Luckily there’s no connection between the state of being predominantly moslem and defoliation. /s
Thanks Lorianne.
Obviously you are not in tune with nature, ebola is gaia's revenge for destroying the forest. They're going to have to replant and sacrifice her a whole lot of virgins to turn this around!
Perhaps you could also argue that outlawing DDT led to increased an insect population that could support more bats.
Here, I thought it was the reduction of polar ice. (the top part, not the bottom)
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