It's Not About the Bats: Conservation, the coronavirus and how we must re-set our relationship with nature

By Adam Cruise

It’s not about the bats, it’s about you and me. The Covid-19 pandemic put the spotlight on how human expansion has led to an increase in zoonotic viruses jumping species, and calls on us to re-set our relationship with nature. In his trademark accessible and anecdotal style, Cruise explores the ethical and practical issues – and solutions – to the greatest problem facing earth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tafelberg
• Release date: Feb 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9780624091585

Adam Cruise

Adam Cruise is a conservation and travel writer, who works for a variety of magazines and newspapers. His books include the well-received Louis Botha's War and In the Pursuit of Solitude. He was born in Johannesburg and studied at the University of Cape Town and Stellenbosch University. He currently lives in Nice, France.

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9780624089810_FC

Tafelberg

For Alejandro Nadal –

Rest in peace, old friend

Foreword

As we grapple with climate change, global warming and the rapid decline of species, the increase of zoonotic diseases and the onset of Covid-19 has given us a chance to hit pause and do a rapid re-set of our approach to wildlife conservation and to try to come to grips with what is causing everything to go into decline.

Adam Cruise’s book is very timely in this regard and should be read not only by conservationists but also by scholars and decision-makers trying to fathom this new world we live in.

Dr Adam Cruise has enormous capacity for observation, empathy and eloquence, which makes him uniquely able to listen, learn and present the right words to express the problems underlying this age of pandemics.

His great talents enable him to get right to the crux of the issues causing global disease outbreaks, which also happen to fail wildlife conservation. Adam has successfully drawn on his considerable experience as an academic, journalist and his travels throughout his homeland of South Africa to tell several interwoven stories that tackle the thorny issues of human-centred wildlife conservation.

This book goes where few have gone before.

It offers a new look at a variety of issues from government conservation policies to trophy hunting and the wildlife trade with specific reference to the southern African region and its influence on global policies.

He deconstructs the various challenges and their solutions with wit and compelling insight. Authoritative sources are quoted throughout this book, with many references to programmes that have been tried, and mostly failed, but with possible solutions proposed.

This is a courageous book that you will not regret reading.

Enjoy.

Patricia S.W. Awori

Director of Pan-African Wildlife Conservation Network

November 2020

Introduction

Only within the moment of time represented by the

present century has one species – man – acquired

significant power to alter the nature of the world.

– Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

In the village of Meliandou in Guinea, a group of children were playing near a hollow tree when they disturbed a small colony of bats hiding inside. Scientists believe that this seemingly innocuous event was the cause of the devastating West African Ebola outbreak in 2013, a deadly disease that has up to a 90 per cent mortality rate.¹

Fifteen years earlier, a virus called Nipah, which had been transmitted to humans from pigs and cows, raged across Malaysia, Bangladesh and India. That disease, with a deadly 60 per cent mortality rate, had its origin in fruit bats whose secretions had been eaten by the livestock.²

A few years later, a coronavirus called SARS-CoV, which originated in a live animal market in Hong Kong, was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) after 8 000 people were infected.³ Ten per cent of those affected died.⁴ The host of the virus on that occasion was a palm civet. But the virus’s origin, as with the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, was also a bat.⁵ The civet may have eaten a bat, or have eaten something in a bat cave that had been infected by bat secretions. By all accounts, this was an early warning sign of what was coming. In the wake of SARS, a study in 2007 warned that the presence of a ‘large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses’ in bats was a ticking time bomb for a global pandemic.⁶

Fast-forward to 2019: a person from southwest China likely entered a bat cave near his village to hunt wildlife to sell at a live-animal market in Wuhan. The animal could have been anything from a rodent to a pangolin that would have picked up the disease from a bat. Once the animal reached the crowded market, the disease from the caged animal would have spilled over to several other species before unwittingly finding its way onto the dinner plate of an unsuspecting human. That person most likely began to develop a nagging cough, passing the pathogens on to a friend or family member – and boom! Before we knew it, the disease we now call COVID-19 had spread across the world like an Australian brushfire. Economies crumbled, jobs disappeared and hundreds of thousands human lives were lost.

But although this pandemic, and others before that, originated in bats, the fault is not theirs.

Many other wild species, and most domestic ones, can also transmit diseases to humans. HIV/Aids originally probably came from eating a chimpanzee, MERS from a camel, and not to mention the countless bird and swine flu outbreaks from chickens and pigs, and mad cow and other diseases in the poultry and livestock industries that have wreaked havoc with economies and human health over the years.

COVID-19 is simply the latest, and most devastating, of a growing list of pandemics in recent years. About one quarter of human deaths worldwide are caused by infectious diseases. Of those, 60 per cent are considered to originate in animals, called zoonoses, and more than 70 per cent of those originate from wildlife. In the past 40 years, the worst global pandemics have all been zoonotic in origin.⁷ These include the full veritable list of the most deadly infectious diseases: HIV/Aids, SARS, MERS, Nipah, avian flu, swine flu, Ebola and Zika, and now COVID-19.

But, again, even though they may originate in animals, one can hardly blame the animals. The real cause of these growing and catastrophic pandemics lies solely with behaviour of an animal infinitely more sinister than a bat, pangolin, pig, civet, or camel. It’s humans, and our voracious desire for meat.

Essentially, all these pandemics are directly caused by the human consumption of other species. The capture, trade, slaughter and consumption of other animals is all set against the backdrop of rapidly declining natural environments. Many zoonoses are transmitted at the edges of these disappearing spaces, which are home to both a rich diversity of wildlife as well as hundreds of thousands of hidden viruses – most of which are as yet little known. A study revealed that an estimated 1.7 million viruses exist in mammals and birds, but fewer than 0.1 per cent have so far been described.⁸ New research, which assessed nearly 7 000 animal communities on six continents, has found that the conversion of wild places into farmland or settlements showed zoonotic disease numbers that were up to 2.5 times higher in places that had recently been converted from a natural ecosystem to farmland – and that, while numbers of larger mammals and birds declined, the proportion of smaller species, such as rats and bats, that carry these pathogens increased by up to 70 per cent compared to their numbers in undamaged ecosystems.⁹ As humans, in our quest to consume wild animals and make agricultural space to feed and consume domestic ones, push deeper into hitherto untouched natural environments, we are in effect opening a Pandora’s box of future deadly pandemics.

But human catastrophe aside, this very same attitude towards nature is resulting in staggering declines of other species. Due to our appetite for animal flesh coupled with our exploding population numbers and rapidly disappearing natural spaces, over one million other species are literally staring down the barrel of extinction.¹⁰ Many of them will be gone in a matter of years, others in months, and others still as you read this.

It is common knowledge that human behaviour towards the natural world has triggered what scientists and commentators now refer to as the Sixth Mass Extinction event in the history of Earth. The Sixth Mass Extinction is the only one created solely by an earth-dwelling species – us. It is also referred to as the Anthropocene epoch.i This is a term that defines Earth’s most recent geologic time period as being human-influenced, or anthropogenic. The definition of the Anthropocene is based on overwhelming global evidence that the atmospheric, geological, hydrologic, biospheric and other Earth system processes are now altered by humans.¹¹

The word combines the root word ‘anthropos’ (human) with the root word ‘-cene’ (the suffix for ‘epoch in geologic time’). This has occurred largely as a result of unregulated and unsustainable anthropogenic activities, like over-harvesting of natural resources, consumption of wildlife, climate change, natural habitat loss and widespread pollution.¹²

The ‘anthropo’ can also be added to another suffix – ‘centrism’ – in ‘anthropocentrism’ (human-centred). This is a term that gets to the real heart of the problem. It is this egotistical attitude in humans that is fundamental in causing widespread ecosystem destruction, species extinction and global pandemics. Anthropocentrism centres solely on human needs, wants and desires. All other living beings are regarded as a means to human ends. Ecosystems, plants, trees and other animals are treated, consumed and utilised for economic and welfare benefits for humans, and humans alone. Except, as COVID-19 brought into sharp relief, our self-centred desires have turned upon us with a savagery of epic proportions. This decade has begun as the one in which humans may become the only species to document their own extinction.

Of course, there are degrees of human egoism. Anthropocentrism in its full sense isn’t as strong in many of us humans. Some humans don’t see animals exclusively as commodities. In fact, many of us regard other animals for their intrinsic value in that we value them as ends in themselves. We tend to regard our pets in this way. We see them as fellow beings with their own needs, desires and fears. Basically, we show them a degree of moral consideration, and in some cases we value them more than we do most other human beings. Some of us extend this moral consideration to wild animals. Many regard elephants, lions, dolphins and pandas in much the same way, although I’m not sure the same can be said about snakes, spiders and mosquitoes (but more about this later). However, even though many of us do attribute intrinsic value to other animals, this attribution remains anthropocentric primarily because we still tend to view the joys and sufferings of other animals from a human-centred perspective. This, as I will show in Chapter 6, can also lead to murderous consequences for other animals as well as the natural environment.

In short, in our collective human psyche there are degrees of anthropocentrism, from strong through to weak.

Anthropocentrism in its strong sense favours human existence and well-being at the expense of the survival or well-being of other animals. With strong anthropocentrism, there is no regard for the future utility of a species: it’s a case of take-as-much-as-you-can-before-they disappear-for-good. Over the history of humankind, we have seen this strong anthropocentrism play out time and time again.

The best-known case is that of the hapless dodo. Here was a flightless bird living contentedly on a little speck of paradise in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The bird resembled an overgrown pigeon. It was plump, weighing in at 23 kilograms, but free of worry from predators and human activity. These birds had spent aeons in their happy little island bubble until some Portuguese circumnavigators mistakenly stumbled upon the island in 1507. Without any built-in fear and unable to fly, the dodo became an easy source of fresh meat for the scurvy-ridden sailors. Large numbers of dodos were killed for food; later, introduced species like rats, pigs and monkeys added to their downfall by eating the dodo eggs and hatchlings in their unprotected ground nests. This toxic mixture of human exploitation and introduced species wiped out the dodo population on Mauritius in rapid time. Within 180 years of the arrival of humans, the unfortunate bird had become extinct. The last one was caught, defeathered and cooked in 1681.¹³

Strong anthropocentrism remained prevalent during the colonial era in Africa. European settlers moving into the interior pretty much shot everything that moved, not just for the pot, but more often for the ‘sport’ of it. They were simply satisfying a bloodlust of bagging trophies in a quest for the heaviest tusks, longest horns and biggest heads. This was strongly anthropocentric in that there was little or no regard for protecting the animals for future hunting. In South Africa, many species – especially those closest to the first European settlement under the shadow of Table Mountain, such as the bluebuck and quagga – became extinct, while most big game were locally and regionally wiped out. As the settlers pushed further inland, the great migratory herds of black wildebeest, springbok and other antelope were also exterminated, at least to the point where the migrations stopped altogether. These species were saved in the nick of time by a realisation of some foresighted hunters that their beloved sport might be terminated if something wasn’t immediately done. Thus, in a weaker anthropocentric sense, they fenced off some areas in an effort to protect the last remaining stragglers. The plan then was to restore their population numbers so they could continue hunting them. In this manner, most of South Africa’s national parks, including the Kruger National Park and many private ones, came into being.

In more modern times, we still see strong anthropocentrism being played out across the world. In a South African context, it is the plight of rhinos. In 2007, South Africa saw an alarming spike in rhino poaching. This was largely due to a demand in Southeast Asia for their horn. Rhino horn is used in countries like Vietnam for medicinal reasons and in others, like China, as carved ornaments. But because the demand followed a strong anthropocentric approach – consuming horn without consideration for any future utility of the product – rhinos in Asia all but went extinct, forcing traders to turn to Africa, where the already dwindling populations suddenly faced more intense poaching pressure.

It’s not just rhinos that are reeling from our strong anthropocentric behaviour. Elephants throughout Africa are being targeted for their ivory to the point that one third of the continent’s population were slaughtered in the past decade, while pangolins, the most trafficked animal in the world, are being decimated due to an unrestrained demand for their scales.

Our lust to consume certain animals and animal products also threatens the existence of millions of non-target wild species that get caught in the crossfire. Our global desire for beef and the need to feed the billions of cows that feed us has caused the mass destruction of natural spaces, notably in the Amazon, where hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of rainforest are destroyed and converted into soy plantations. A staggering 98 per cent of soy production is for livestock feed.¹⁴ As the rainforests dwindle and many species within them die out, humans move in, walking right into a hornet’s nest of awaiting zoonotic pathogens.

It’s not only rainforests that are disappearing. Most natural habitat, from the tundra to the African savannah, is being converted into agricultural or urban environments. In the oceans, a different scenario is being played out, where tons of fish and other marine life are being over-harvested to the point at which entire ecosystems are collapsing and marine species are going extinct.

One particularly brutal case of strong anthropocentrism is the tragic tale of the tiny vaquita porpoise, the world’s most endangered marine mammal. The vaquita is found only in the shallow waters of the northern Gulf of California in Mexico. In 2012, it was estimated there were only about 200 vaquitas remaining. By 2014, about half of them had been killed in gillnets, leaving fewer than 100 individuals. Of these, fewer than 25 were likely to be reproductively mature females. In March 2019, there were no more than 22 vaquitas left – a staggering decline of more than 95 per cent since 1997. The days of the vaquita’s existence on Planet Earth are numbered – literally. The rapid collapse of the population is a direct result of rampant illegal trade in another endangered fish species, the totoaba, which is caught in gillnets that entangle vaquitas. The totoaba is highly prized for its swim bladder, an organ that controls the fish’s buoyancy. The escalating demand for the swim bladder comes from China, where the swim bladder is valued as a traditional health food. The bladders are dried and smuggled out of Mexico to China, often via the US. This is the latest, and most appalling, case of strong anthropocentrism being played out. Sadly, it is one case of millions occurring in the world at any given moment.

Strong anthropocentrism had already been identified as the overriding cause of the destruction of the natural environment and extinction of species way back in the 1960s.¹⁵ Erudite thinkers in academia, particularly in philosophy, began to pose a challenge to the dominant anthropocentric paradigm by questioning the assumed superiority of human beings over members of all the other species on earth.¹⁶ Yet despite these serious reservations raised decades ago, strong anthropocentrism, as demonstrated by the above examples, is a problem that persists today.

However, even anthropocentrism in a weaker sense is causing major problems. In ‘weak anthropocentrism’, wildlife and natural resource utilisation is still seen in purely instrumental or commercial terms (thus exclusively in terms of serving human interests), but instead of overexploitation, as in the case of the rhino, elephant, pangolin and vaquita, species and nature are treated as sustainable resources in that wild animals are protected so as to provide continued benefit for humans into the foreseeable future. In other words, while the utilisation of nature from a purely human perspective remains in place, anthropocentrism is marginally curtailed for the sake of longer-term human benefit.

The proclamation of national parks in South Africa is one such example of weak anthropocentrism. Hunters, as mentioned, wanted to continue their sport and in order to do so they had to conserve the species they liked to shoot. These days, national parks no longer permit trophy hunting, but many private parks do, like those along the unfenced borders on the Kruger and other national parks. Trophy hunting today is weakly anthropocentric in that the money accrued supposedly goes back into the conservation of the hunted species.

In fact, the process has gone even further. Animals are not only conserved but their numbers are deliberately increased. Wild herbivore populations in South Africa have increased tenfold in number since the 1960s solely because they provide an economic benefit for humans. What’s more, some wild animals are bred with bigger horns, more luxuriant manes and all sorts of unusual colours (like white lions and black impala) to fetch higher prices from hunters wanting to take home a unique trophy to show off to their friends. Wildlife, especially in South Africa, is seen as a commodity to be traded, bred, hunted and slaughtered for profit. This is not much different from domestic livestock farming in that not only are animals preserved for immediate human wants and needs but their numbers are increased for continued and