Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that cause disease in animals. Covid-19 is one of several such viruses that have made the jump from animals to humans. So far, the evidence suggests that the virus was first transmitted to humans at a seafood market in Wuhan, China. The Wuhan seafood market also sold wildlife, but despite extensive…

Authors: Dan Challender, Amy Hinsley, Diogo Veríssimo, Michael 't Sas-Rolfes

The early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic have been linked to a “wet” market in Wuhan, in the Hubei province of eastern China. Wet markets are common in Asia, Africa and elsewhere, selling fresh fruit and vegetables, poultry, fresh meat and live animals, including wildlife. Reports initially indicated that the…

2020 was supposed to be a super year for nature. Instead we got a pandemic.

Arguably, it is our strained relationship with nature that got us in to this mess. The evidence is fairly conclusive that the Sars-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 first made its way in to a human vector in a wet market in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. The original animal…

Mountain ungulates—wild sheep and goats of the subfamily Caprinae—mark the grandeur of montane ecosystems. In India, the term mountain ungulate often invokes flamboyant images of species such as the Ibex Capra sibirica or markhor Capra falconeri standing on the steep, high cliffs of the Himalaya. But there is another species, often overlooked, which lives in the mountains of the Western Ghats…

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Humans exploit and trade wildlife across the globe - for food, clothing, decorations, furniture, medicine and status symbols. However, for all too many species, this represents a major threat to their survival. Slow-growing, economically-valuable species, such as tigers, rhinos and large sharks and rays, are highly vulnerable to trade-driven extinction.