I’ve seen this story before. For nearly a decade, I worked for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fighting epidemics around the world. In 2014, I deployed to Liberia for the largest-ever outbreak of Ebola, then five years later to DRC for the second-largest Ebola outbreak ever. In these resource-limited settings, infection control is tough. The virus spreads through bodily fluids, yet I witnessed local health workers forced to reuse their disposable masks and gloves because of limited supply. Faced with such inequities, it’s no wonder that thousands of people died between those two outbreaks.
Ebola, for example, is a disease tied to deforestation. The 2014 outbreak in West Africa likely began with an axe. In rural Guinea, starving communities cleared forests to make way for new farms. Those forests were previously home to bats, a natural reservoir for all kinds of nasty viruses. The bats, in turn, found new homes among local villagers. Some researchers believe patient zero was a two-year-old boy who acquired the virus from bats living inside a hollowed-out tree where he played.
Health workers in orange hazmat suits board the Dutch cruise ship, MV Hondius following a deadly Andes hantavirus outbreak, in the Netherlands on May 20, 2026. —Nicolas Economou—NurPhoto/Getty Images
First, there’s the issue of habitat destruction. Our ceaseless extraction of resources has destroyed ecosystems around the world, erasing boundaries between humans and wildlife, and increasing the opportunity for spillovers. Industrial farming facilities, wherein thousands of inbred animals routinely sit in their own feces while waiting to die, can also function as factory-sized petri dishes. Finally, the commercial wildlife trade, catering to growing demand for exciting foods and exotic pets, has been known to export dangerous pathogens around the world and, often, into urban centers.
This is not a hypothetical risk. It is a well-documented, incredibly deadly phenomenon that does not respect borders. Still, it's a blind spot for the public health sector. In 2020, the World Health Organization convened an expert panel charged with figuring out how to make COVID-19 the last pandemic. Their 86-page report used the word "wildlife" twice, and the words "deforestation" and "climate" once, all crammed into one small paragraph. And, by and large, medical schools don’t cover this topic either. As a result, many future physicians don't learn much about ecology, agricultural policy, or veterinary science.
Unfortunately, the one serious attempt to change that pattern has been stalled. Last year, the WHO adopted a pandemic treaty, the first of its kind with obligations on spillover prevention. The day before the WHO learned of the hantavirus outbreak, however, negotiators failed to agree on how to equitably share critical pathogen samples, vaccines, and medicines between richer and poorer countries during future outbreaks. If we can't agree on how to share life-saving inventions after the fact, the prospect of robust investments in prevention seems like an even longer shot.
Tools to address spillover outbreaks
First, we have to halt deforestation. Last year, the world lost 4.3 million hectares of tropical forest larger than Switzerland. The World Wildlife Fund warns that we are tragically far off track from reaching the international goal of ending deforestation by 2030. Addressing deforestation is a question of political will. We have to make a tree in the Amazon or the Congo basin worth more alive than dead. Plus, beyond potentially preventing future outbreaks, protecting forests can simultaneously help address two other catastrophic societal threats: climate change and biodiversity loss.
Third, governments should crack down on the commercial wildlife trade. In 2003, the United States experienced an outbreak of mpox after people imported African rodents to keep as pets. The year before that, SARS had emerged, ultimately infecting over 8,000 people in nearly 30 countries. It originated in animal markets selling live wildlife. Nearly two decades later, this same type of live animal market likely sparked the COVID-19 pandemic that upended the world order and killed millions of people. Live wild birds and mammals should not be sold in the streets of Wuhan, New York, or Paris. Doing so is like conducting a dangerous genetic experiment in the heart of the world’s largest population centers. We need real regulation coupled with enforcement.
We must be humble enough to accept that we are not the masters of this planet. We are not a species that sits above all others. Rather, we are one of millions. As our planet’s intricate web of life unravels, there are complex—and often unpredictable—consequences for humanity.
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