Connecting the dots: the emerging science of conservation medicine links human and animal health with the environment

E: The Environmental Magazine, Nov-Dec, 2004 by Jim Motavalli

* PERU: Researchers are making a link between destruction of the Amazonian rainforest and an explosion of malaria-bearing mosquitoes that thrive in sunlit ponds, according to a report in the journal Nature. A team from Johns Hopkins University collected 15,000 mosquitoes from a jungle road in northeastern Peru and counted how many were Anopheles darlingi, which transmits malaria. They then tabulated their results with statistics on deforestation using satellite images. An even one percent increase in deforestation increases the number of malaria-bearing mosquitoes by eight percent, says researcher Jonathan Patz. The study showed that the insects "ran wild" after 30 to 40 percent of the forest was destroyed. Malaria researcher Phil Lounibos of the University of Florida points out that the problem wouldn't be as acute if the A. darlingi mosquitoes hadn't been imported in the first place--a direct result of the establishment of tropical fish farms in Peru.

The Wildlife Trust: Emerging Leaders

Conservation medicine clearly needs a well-organized champion, able to synthesize the vast amounts of new scientific data from disparate sources. That work has fallen to the Wildlife Trust, which shares a leafy campus along the Hudson River in Palisades, New York with Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and CCM, whose work it fosters.

Wildlife Trust has a long history. The parent organization was founded in 1963 by British naturalist and author Gerald Durrell (brother of Lawrence Durrell, author of the "Alexandria Quartet" books). Mary Pearl, the executive director of Wildlife Trust, describes Durrell as "the Marion Perkins of England," with a wide following for his animal-themed books. Durrell became convinced that zoos had a responsibility to carry out conservation work, and to that end started breeding colonies of endangered animals at Jersey Zoological Park, which he founded. His work pioneered inter-zoo exchanges of animals and scientific information. Today, the British organization he founded continues as the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, while the U.S.-based Wildlife Trust that developed from it (founded in 1971, and originally known as Wildlife Preservation Trust International) has undertaken a different mission.

There are many overlaps between the U.S. and British groups, however. The Durrell Trust has been active in attempting to restore critically endangered black lion tamarins (which live on just two percent of their historical forest habitat) to the wilds of Brazil. Three were reintroduced in 1999. The Wildlife Trust also works with black lion tamarins (and uses one on its logo), but its work concentrates on improving and connecting isolated pockets of tamarin habitat in Brazil.

The Wildlife Trust is not just the "go to" organization on conservation medicine; it virtually launched the discipline. The Trust conducts original research, bringing together teams of physicians, vets, ecologists, wildlife epidemiologists and public health officials to study the many strands of emerging diseases.