'A loaded gun:' Wet markets, wildlife trafficking pose threat for the next pandemic - USA TODAY

'A loaded gun:' Wet markets, wildlife trafficking pose threat for the next pandemic - USA TODAY

'A loaded gun:' Wet markets, wildlife trafficking pose threat for the next pandemic - USA TODAY

Posted: 16 May 2020 03:07 AM PDT

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As people around the world stay home to stop the spread of the coronavirus, air pollution is down and urban wildlife sightings are up. Scientists say it's an opportunity to study man's impact on the environment. (April 22) AP Domestic

WASHINGTON – In the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak, the Chinese government moved quickly to ban wildlife consumption and crack down on certain "wet markets" where snakes, civets and other exotic animals are sold along with more traditional livestock.    

Scientists applauded the move as long overdue, but some fear it won't last – and they argue much more needs to be done to guard against future diseases that can make the animal-to-human leap.

Experts also worry that President Donald Trump's unsupported suggestion, echoed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, that the virus escaped from a Chinese lab – rather than emerged in a wet market – could undermine efforts to confront a dangerous and recurring source of potential disease outbreaks: wildlife trafficking. 

"It is deflecting and diverting attention from the real problem," said Peter Li, an associate professor of East Asian politics at the University of Houston-Downtown and a consultant for animal welfare groups.

Scientists believe the deadly novel coronavirus now circulating the globe likely came from bats and passed through another mammal – perhaps a pangolin, one of the most trafficked animals in the world – before jumping to humans. Chinese authorities identified an early cluster of coronavirus infections among individuals who had some connection to a seafood wet market in Wuhan, where the virus first emerged. 

It has not been proved definitively that virus transmission began in that market, but scientists say such markets are hotbeds of disease. Some wet markets in China sell live poultry, fish and reptiles, as well as a range of exotic and farm-bred wild animals.

"These wet markets are really perfectly conducive to spillover events, because you have so many different species coming in – you have wild species interacting with domestic species," said George Wittemyer, an associate professor of wildlife and conservation biology at Colorado State University.

"You have animals stacked on top of each other," with blood, feces and other fluids flowing from their cages, he added. "You are probably having hundreds to thousands of individual animals exposed to other species," along with humans "actively behaving in a way that's perfect for viral transmission." 

Domesticated livestock are also a major source of emerging diseases, Wittemyer said, and "you're sort of playing Russian roulette" without aggressive efforts to track new pathogens in animals.  

A man reaches for a pangolin that is about to be slaughtered and prepared for a meal in a restaurant on the outskirts of Guangzhou, China, on 4 January 2019. Pangolin meat at the restaurant sells for around US $376 per kilogram. This image, released by World Press Photo, Thursday April 16, 2020, is part of a series which won second prize in the Nature Stories category.

 (Photo: Brent Stirton, Getty Images for National Geographic, World Press Photo via AP)

Devastating the planet for whims of the wealthy?

Scientists estimate that 75% of new or emerging infectious diseases in people come from animals, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Humans can catch a virus from an infected animal in many ways – through their saliva or other bodily fluids; through their habitat, whether a forest or a chicken coop; and via consumption of raw or undercooked meat or other contaminated food.  

A slew of deadly diseases – from HIV to Ebola – began in animals and jumped to humans, with consumption of wildlife meat or other interactions with wildlife as the likely vector. As with COVID-19, scientists believe the 2003 SARS epidemic began in a wet market in southern China, after moving from a bat to a civet cat, which are sometimes sold in those markets.

Trump said on April 30 that he had seen evidence suggesting the novel coronavirus originated in a virology lab in Wuhan. Similarly, Pompeo said earlier this month there was "a significant amount of evidence" that the virus emerged from a Chinese lab.

But neither have detailed what that evidence is, and they have both hedged when pressed by reporters. "We don't have certainty about whether it began in the lab or whether it began someplace else," Pompeo said during a media briefing on May 6.

And other officials have contradicted their assertions. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, has said the scientific evidence does not support the theory that the virus was man-made.

"Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that (this virus) evolved in nature and then jumped species," Fauci told National Geographic in an interview published earlier this month. 

Some critics believe Trump has pressed for an investigation into the origin of the virus as a way to deflect blame for his own missteps in responding to the pandemic. The U.S. intelligence community issued a rare statement in April stating there was broad consensus that the virus was not man-made or genetically modified. But the statement left open the question of whether the virus was accidentally released by a laboratory in China or whether it came from animals and then jumped to humans.

"My biggest concern with the politicization of it is that it's delaying what we actually need," said Wittemyer, which is a global recognition that human interactions with animals present a major disease risk.

Experts say only a sliver of wet markets sell wildlife, and the demand for such exotic food is mostly fueled by the wealthy.  

"It's the luxury part of wildlife food trade that creates problems," said Andrew Dobson, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University. Fancy restaurants serve them to wealthy customers, and some high-flying couples like to serve exotic animal dishes at their weddings, he said, just as some Americans buy elephant ivory or smuggle parrots, snakes and other wild animals into the U.S. to keep as exotic pets.  

"Really, it's devastating the planet for the whims of wealthy people," he said. 

Dobson said eliminating wildlife trafficking – whether for food or other uses – would have a dramatic impact on the risk of future disease outbreaks. 

"It would halve it," he said. 

Dobson and others say that China's decision to ban the consumption of wildlife is a positive step – but a baby one.   

For starters, China's ban includes loopholes – including the use of wild animal parts for medicinal purposes and tax incentives that encourage the export of some species. That leaves many wild animals vulnerable.

Take, for example, pangonlins. They are small mammals covered in scales that live in Asia and Africa. In some Asian countries, the meat is considered a delicacy and pangolin scales are used in traditional Asian medicine. Pangolins are protected under international law, but they are still widely trafficked amid demand from China, Vietnam and elsewhere.

Wildlife traders "promote wild animal meat as something good for your health," Li said, pointing to unsupported claims that pangolin scales can boost fertility, among other promises. Li ridiculed the unproven aphrodisiac and disease-fighting properties of exotic meats and said wet markets are not only "hellholes" of cruelty but also of disease. 

This photo taken on April 15, 2020 shows prawns for sale at a shop at the Wuhan Baishazhou Market in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province. - China's "wet" markets have gained a bad international reputation as the coronavirus roiling the world is believed to have been born in stalls selling live game in Wuhan late last year.

 (Photo: HECTOR RETAMAL, AFP via Getty Images)

Dobson said the international body that monitors the global wildlife trade is weak and underfunded, with a $25 million annual budget. And many countries have little to no incentive to crack down on wildlife trafficking. 

"The wildlife trade is hugely corrupt and massively tied up with the arms trade," as well as human smuggling, he said.

Illegal wildlife trafficking is the fourth most lucrative global crime, according to the World Economic Forum. Wildlife advocacy groups estimated that wildlife trade generates between $7 billion and $23 billion annually.

'Shocking to see markets ... in full operation' 

Li noted that after the SARS outbreak, Chinese authorities reversed a 2003 ban on wildlife consumption amid pressure from traders and because Chinese authorities saw wildlife breeding as a revenue source and job creator in otherwise poor, rural areas of the country. 

"The Chinese government quickly reopened the trade on August 5, 2003, so barely two months after SARS was over," he said.

Even if China keeps it's new ban in place, other Asian countries have not yet followed suit – despite new pressure from animal-rights groups and conservation experts who point to the devastating impact of COVID-19.

Last week, one advocacy group dedicated to saving dogs begged Indonesia's president, Joko Widodo, to close markets where live animals are sold and slaughtered on-site.

"It is shocking to see markets selling wildlife and domesticated animals in full operation – many of which are in densely populated cities such as Jakarta, Medan and Manado – providing almost identical environments to those from which COVID-19 emerged," reads a May 12 letter from a coalition called Dog Meat Free Indonesia. 

A man looks at caged civet cats in a wildlife market in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province Monday, Jan. 5, 2004. China on Monday confirmed that its first SARS case since an outbreak of the disease was contained in July, 2003 and authorities ordered the emergency slaughter of some 10,000 civet cats and related species after tests linked a virus found in the animals to the patient.

 (Photo: LIU DAWEI, Associated Press)

Still, Li and others say they are optimistic that the catastrophic toll of the coronavirus pandemic – in terms of worldwide deaths and the global economic contraction – will lead to a more aggressive crackdown on wildlife trafficking in China and elsewhere. 

Wittemyer said the Chinese government will face intense domestic and international pressure to keep its current ban in place, and other world leaders should also be motivated to step up tracking and enforcement. But any such effort will run up against strong political and cultural headwinds, he added.

"I will be so disappointed in humanity if, after ... putting ourselves through this much pain, that we would be that short-sighted" not to address wildlife trafficking, he said. "It's a loaded gun for us, as we see."

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/05/16/coronavirus-wet-markets-wildlife-trade-pose-threat-next-pandemic/5189902002/

A true fish tale: How a railroad crash boosted Nebraska's fishing stock in the late 1800s - Omaha World-Herald

Posted: 10 May 2020 04:37 AM PDT

Salmon caught in the Platte and Missouri Rivers? Black bass and pickerel in the Elkhorn?

This fish story that dates to 1873 has largely been lost to the annals of time, and how it happened almost defies logic — what are the chances? — but trust us, it is true.

For almost a decade some of the best freshwater fishing anywhere in the country was in eastern Nebraska's waterways. What made for an angler's delight were a rainy spell, a railroad trestle collapse between Elkhorn and Waterloo and an aquarium car on a Union Pacific train bound for California. That's right. An aquarium car.

Our yarn starts in 1873, when the California Fish Commission chartered a Central Pacific Railroad fruit car to be sent to New England to be fitted as an aquarium. The mission: Stock California's waterways with non-native species. The man in charge: Livingston Stone of the United States Fish Commission.

It was front-page news for the San Francisco Examiner, which printed a letter Stone wrote to the fish commission and included this prophetic excerpt:

"I think I shall be able to start with a good supply of fishes, but the chances against getting them across the continent alive are enormous. Still, everything will be done that experience and care can dictate and while we will prepare for the worst we will hope for the best."

He hadn't counted on a rainy spring in Nebraska.

In New England, Stone was collecting his living fish. From his account in a federal fisheries report published in 1876, upward of 60 black bass and 11 walleyes from Lake Champlain, 190 yellow perch and 12 bullheads from the Missisquoi River, 110 catfish from the Raritan River, 20 tautogs (blackfish) and 1,500 fresh-water eels from Martha's Vineyard, 1,000 eastern trout from Charlestown and 162 lobsters and a barrel of oysters from Massachusetts Bay. The black bass, bullheads, catfish and some of the lobsters were "full-grown and heavy with spawn."

All went into the aquarium car. It held a 5-ton covered tank that was the width of the car, 32 inches deep and 8 feet long. At the other end were an icebox and "the reserves of sea-water, six large cases of lobsters and a barrel of oysters." Portable tanks were in the center of the car. Four passengers, including Stone, slept on top of the 5-ton tank.

At Albany, New York, 40,000 fresh-water eels from the Hudson River were loaded. At Chicago, 20,000 shad and shad eggs and perhaps some salmon were brought on board to stock the Great Salt Lake in Utah.

The train went on the U.P. line in Omaha on June 8. Aside from some eels and a few lobsters that had perished, Stone wrote, "everything was promising well."

Until dinner time that Sunday afternoon. Stone:

"Suddenly there came a terrible crash, and tanks, ice and everything in the car seemed to strike us in every direction. We were, everyone of us, at once wedged in by the heavy weights upon us."

A trestle over a flooding slough east of the Elkhorn River, 400 feet long and 12 feet high, had weakened from the soggy conditions. The front of the train, which included a mail car behind the aquarium car and then several passenger cars, tumbled into what the Omaha Republican newspaper called 10 feet of water in a rapid current.

The U.P. roadmaster riding in the engine, 35-year-old Michael Carey of Omaha, died in the wreckage. His was the first burial in the newly consecrated Holy Sepulchre Cemetery at 48th and Leavenworth Streets, and the only death from the accident.

Stone and the others in the aquarium car swam around the car and climbed on the engine to reach safety. All others on the train survived.

"Growing up in Gretna, I remember the old-timers talking about this,'' said Greg Wagner, a longtime spokesman for the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. "They'd refer to it as 'The Wreck.' "

How about the fish in the aquarium car? Stone, in The Omaha Herald the day after the accident, said:

"The fish have all been lost in the Elkhorn River, which at the present time (is) very high and muddy, and no doubt, all of the fish soon perished in that water so that even Nebraska will not be benefited by the sudden fish planting."

The tautog (blackfish), lobsters and oysters didn't survive. The others apparently thrived, according to these newspaper accounts.

20200510_new_stufish_map_print

A trestle over a flooding slough east of the Elkhorn River, 400 feet long and 12 feet high, had weakened from the soggy conditions. The crash stocked eastern Nebraska rivers with fish during the late 1800s.

At the time:

Omaha Republican: "When the fish car went through the trestle work it sunk completely under water, where it toppled over and the fish escaped into the slough and thence to the Elkhorn. At least a million of small fry were then let loose into a Nebraska stream. The river is quite muddy now, so some of them will probably die but the greater portion will live, increase and multiply.

"It is not very joyful news to the owners of the fish or to those who may have to pay for them, but it is a big thing for the Elkhorn River, which is thus magnificently stocked free with the finest varieties of fish."

Three years later, in 1876:

Kansas City Journal: "At Plattsmouth, some fishermen hauled a seine in the Missouri and among the fish taken were a large number of salmon from six to 18 inches long. These fish, it is believed, came from the Elkhorn. … So it will be seen that the accident is proving a benefit to Nebraska and it demonstrates that salmon will flourish in our streams, as muddy as they are."

It should be noted that the salmon could have come from stockings by the U.S. Fish Commission along the Missouri from the Floyd River at Sioux City, Iowa, to Council Bluffs in 1875. Isn't there a little wiggle room to every fish story?

Four years later, 1877:

Nebraska State Journal: "We are reminded of the great washout whereby $20,000 worth of 'fish seed' was spilled into the running waters by the sight of some of those very fish which have been caught by the boys in the river and lakes hereabouts. Black bass … trout, pickerel, pike and salmon, as well as eels, have been captured in sufficient quantities to demonstrate the fact that this whole water course has been well stocked with these beautiful and excellent fish."

Omaha Herald: "Now we are beginning to realize on our home fisheries. Yesterday Sheely Bros. received a shipment of salmon taken from the Elkhorn at Waterloo. Our readers will remember that a few years ago … spaun (sic) went into the river. Nice thing, wasn't it?"

Even seven years later, 1880:

Omaha Daily Herald: "Fishermen are catching large numbers of black bass, pickerel and other choice fish from the (Platte) river near Ashland, the progeny of those spilled into the Elkhorn river a few years ago by an accident to a car filled with live young fish from the Atlantic seaboard."

Finally in the early 1880s, the great fishing dried up in Nebraska.

How did the hooks come up empty? We don't know for sure. Certainly some of the exotic species fared poorly. Another contributory factor could be this concern of the Nebraska State Journal in 1879: "There are parties who own seines and drag the waters clean of fish at all seasons. Fishing with nets should be stopped at once."

Did California ever get its fish? Yes. After the wreck, Stone returned to New England for an immediate retry, this time bringing only shad to California. On the trip west, he asked that the train be stopped at the wreck site so he could bring on 50 gallons of Elkhorn River water for the remainder of the trip to California.

A year later, he delivered a carload of the eastern species to California in eight days. His legacy is such that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's hatchery in Shasta, California, is named for him.

Since then, this story has been largely forgotten. Some details were included in a 1963 publication of the Game and Parks Commission, "A History of Fisheries Resources," by David J. Jones with illustrations by Frank Holub.

In Nebraska, the wreck and the subsequent fishing boon spawned the interest to start a private hatchery near Gretna in 1877, so game fish no longer had to be imported, and a state fish commission was created two years later. That agency is now the Game and Parks Commission.

Transporting fish nationwide by rail continued until truck and air travel became more feasible and economical after World War II, as explained in a 1947 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service historical booklet.

Raquel Espinoza, Union Pacific senior director for corporate communications and media relations, found the booklet in the railroad's archive. She said the Union Pacific Historical Museum in Council Bluffs had no mention of the 1873 wreck in its files.

The Fish and Wildlife Service history, interestingly, begins with Stone's shad-only trip — the one after the wreck — and places it a year later in 1874.

It said the trip was made in Fish Car No. 2. But after reading this fish tale, you now know what happened to Car No. 1.

Trophy Board photos: Nebraskans and their trophies

See a photo gallery featuring some local hunters' top prizes from across the Midlands.

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