Latin America: How Jaguar habitat protects people from infectious disease

In Central and South America, jaguars are often labeled as “cattle
killers” and are slaughtered on sight. The species is also at risk of
declining genetic health as its habitat contracts and populations are
cut off from each other. “If the animals are forced to stay instead of
travel, that can lead to a loss of fitness and create a cascade down
the health ladder,” said Alan Rabinowitz, president and CEO of the
big-cat conservation group Panthera.

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“Once that cascade has been set off, it has been shown through data to
directly link to increases in disease among neighboring human
populations.” A decline in top-level predators such as the jaguar can
lead to a boom in prey populations that encourages the spread of
disease. Some of those diseases can then become zoonotic, jumping from
animals to humans.

HIV, West Nile virus, and avian influenza, for example, are “reemerging diseases which have always been in the environment, but [until recently] they’ve been kept in check and didn’t bleed over into human populations,” Rabinowitz said. As part of its broader efforts to protect big cats, New York-based Panthera has partnered with the Mount Sinai Medical Center to train doctors in the human-health benefits of saving the animals.

“The program is being formulated now, but we have high hopes for it,” said Paul Klotman, chair of Mount Sinai’s Samuel Bronfman Department of Medicine.

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