Biodiversity Improves Health Conditions

[Dendrias]

Hey.

The other week I read a newspaper-article, and I thought this might be interesting for You. Unfortunately, it's in German (Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 5th 2010), but I want to give You an overview.

Several examples of deranged ecosystems show that the effect on humans is not only a loss in number of species, but can have effects on the health-situation. When Indians began to treat their cows with medicaments against inflammation, vultures disappeared, because their kidneys couldn't cope with this medicament. As a result of the loss of vultures, rabid dogs, who now could find food in rotting cows, increased in numbers and attacked humans. Tenthousands of people died because of this disturbance in the ecosystem.
SARS and some other virusses are supposed to have spread out of a similar situation. Even malaria in regions where woodland is being cleared massively. In intact woodland, breeding-places are not as numerous, natural enemies to moskitoes are more numerous. Numbers of infections near to cleared woodlands has increased by the factor or 250.
There are loads of examples of this, lyme-disease in north america, west-nile-virus, hanta-virus.

I don't know anything about scientific implication or the correctness of this article. Perhaps You could correct or comment.

P.S.: I might have to have done some investigation, beforehand. Alas, I have done some, afterwards. Check this for some basic informations of the article (it's even in better English!):
http://www.ecostudies.org/IES_lyme_disease.html

[DaRC]

Yep - it seems we're only now beginning to realise that we live in a symbiotic relationship with the land.

It's a pity that we keep forgetting the lessons - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_bowl

[Jalking]

Yep - it seems we're only now beginning to realise that we live in a symbiotic relationship with the land.

It's a pity that we keep forgetting the lessons - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_bowl

The same thing happened between Eufrat and Tigris and was the main reason Babylon disappered. The lesson was taught allready in ancient time - they didn't learn from it then.

[Dendrias]

And if You read about that Dust-Bowl-thing, don't You think, that doing anything at a certain scale to the land might be dangerous one way or the other? Human pov is so limited, it might ruin an area or two just for nothing.

Near my stepfathers house they were building a dam to a rivlet to prevent a housing area to be flooded. That housing area was a few kilometres downstream, the dam would be flooding a few meadows or fields. To build it, they had to change the course of the rivlet. What I thought ten years ago, when it was done, was: "Why do they take the risk that the ground-water-level changes and everything here will go "down the stream"? Why can't they just stop building their houses in floodland?"
Well, the fields are still fertile (as far as they are with fertilizer), the trees still stand - the level of the rivlet has dropped ever since.

Knowledge might be too limited to see the effects of everything. Do you think of reducing pidgeons in the city? It might have severe effects! And so on.