Environmental Protection Safeguards Nature’s Secrets to Human Wellbeing

Environmental Protection Safeguards Nature’s Secrets to Human Wellbeing

By E. Stanley Ukeni

As the world commemorate Earth Day, I feel it’s important for me to show solidarity by writing this piece—highlighting the all so often understated consequence of unmitigated environmental degradation through deforestation. But first let’s explain what Earth Day is to these of us who are not entirely familiar with this movement and its origins.

Wikipedia explains that the need to establish a ‘day to honor the Earth, and to promote peace’, was first proposed by Peace Activist John McConnell, at a UNESCO Conference held in San Francisco, in 1969.

A month after the first Earth Day was celebrated in March 21, 1970; a separate Earth Day was founded by United States Senator, Gaylord Nelson, as an environmental education day. Nelson’s Earth Day was first held on April 22, 1970. Since then, Earth Day has been celebrated annually on the 22^nd day of April. Earth Day has since 1990 been celebrated in over one hundred and ninety three countries worldwide.

Usually, various events aimed at sensitizing the global populace about environmental issues, and to demonstrate support and solidarity for environmental protection concerns. This year, April 22, 2017, the focus of Earth Day is on the importance of science in the environmental debate. During this year’s celebration of Earth Day, protesters marched worldwide in support of science.

With this year’s observance of Earth Day yesterday, April 22, 2017—with the worldwide march for science, I believe that scientists and conservationists alike joined hand in solidarity to send a resounding message to the entire world that protection of the world’s forest ecosystems is critical to the advancement of scientific research that holds the promise of enhancing the physical wellbeing of humans.

For those of us who are hardcore environmental skeptics, I will try to put, in stark prospective, why conservationists and scientists think that unmitigated deforestation is an urgent environmental and existential issue for humanity.

It is estimated that over thirteen million hectares of forests were lost each year between 2000 and 2010 as a result of forest reclamation activities. There is a recent estimate that suggests that between 1990 and 2015, a whopping 129 million hectares of forest were cleared—for those of us who cannot readily grasp the scale of the environmental devastation, we are talking about a land area the size of South Africa.

In fact, in the last century alone, approximately half of the world’s tropical forests have been lost to deforestation. If this trend continues unabated, WWF Living Forests Model project that an additional forest area of about 170 million hectares would be lost by the year 2030.

At this rate of deforestation, it is possible that the world’s rain forests could completely disappear within a hundred years.  This is a troubling statistics by any stretch of the imagination, and it should alarm every one of us. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that this destructive trajectory is not healthy for our planet—and for the general wellbeing of the collective human race.  

In a recent Los Angeles Times article, published on April 22, 2017, Orion Cruz, the deputy director of forest and climate policy for Earth Day Network—an organization that evolved from the first Earth Day in 1970, was quoted as saying, “The situation is dire. Forests are being eliminated at a very rapid rate and collectively we need to address this problem as quickly as possible. There’s still time to do this, but that time is quickly running out.”

You may be wondering why this is that important to the wellbeing of humans. Well, for starters, it is worth noting that forests impacts our wellbeing in ways that we often take for granted. When forests are cleared-out for other developments, it is not merely the trees that disappear; the natural ecosystems that forests sustain crumbs and wither away—at incalculable consequence for our present and future wellbeing.  

In essence, when forests die, humans end-up paying the price for the loss, in the long-term. This is because, woodlands are vital for the sustainability of the earth biosphere—providing critical ecosystems that offer shelter to all sorts of wildlife, some of which holds secrets that provide cures for diverse human aliments.

Case in point, scientists at Emory University in Atlanta, United States have discovered a virus-fighting peptide in the skin mucus secreted by a colorful frog species called Hydrophylax Bahuvistara. This particular frog species is found in the southern Indian province of Kerala. This species of frog is known to thrive in forest ecosystems.

In their research paper published in the Journal Immunity, the senior author of the study, Joshy Jacob, a professor of microbiology and immunology, as Emory’s vaccine center, stated that the secreted peptide—a subunit of a protein chain, kills dozens of influenza virus strains that plague humans.

The research paper said that, after identifying the more than three dozen immune peptides in the mucus of the frog, the protein building blocks were synthetically produced in the lab. The peptide is effective against Hi influenza viruses, including the H1N1 influenza strain that that caused a pandemic in 2009. The research study said that the peptide was not effective against seasonal strain of the flu virus such as the H3N2 flu and the influenza B viruses.

However, the researchers believe that other frog peptides would prove effective against the seasonal flu. They are currently testing more of the frog-derived peptides against other viruses, including HIV, Hepatitis viruses, Zika and Ebola viruses.

Who knows what future viral pathogenic plague that the peptide of this particular frog or other species of frogs would help prevent or stop. One way we’ll never know is by destroying the forest eco-habitat of various species of rare frogs that might hold secrets for cures to human disease infections.

It is in our collective interest to protect the world’s forest. Our lives may literally depend on it.    

Authored by E. Stanley Ukeni, © 2017. All Rights Reserved. This material and other articles or stories posted on this blog site may not be reproduced, published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed, in whole or in part, without prior expressed written permission from the author, E. Stanley Ukeni.

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Photo credit: Getty Image