Deforestation in Costa Rica raises the risk of cattle becoming infected with rabies by vampire bats, finds a new study.
Emerging Infectious Diseases published the research by disease ecologists at Emory University.
"The government has done an amazing job of protecting much of its tropical forest," Gillespie says."In some areas, however, the country has high rates of deforestation due to clearing of the land for agricultural uses. It's a big dichotomy." They drew from data of the National Animal Health Service of Costa Rica to map the time and locations of rabies outbreaks in cattle from 1985 to 2020 in both northern and southern regions of the country where tropical forest has been cleared for agriculture. They also mapped land-use data across the same time for the outbreak sites, including a radius of 10 kilometers for each site, the maximum foraging range for vampire bats.
"We found the highest probability of rabies outbreaks in Puntarenas Province in the south, indicating the need for localized, preventative interventions in that region to avoid rabies reemergence in people," says Julie Clennon, an eco-epidemiologist in Emory's Department of Environmental Sciences and co-author of the study.
In addition to their association with the destruction of natural habitat, cows and other ruminant animals emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas, as they digest grasses. And the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide is emitted from the manure of ruminants.
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Rabies outbreaks in Costa Rica cattle linked to deforestationDeforestation in Costa Rica raises the risk of cattle becoming infected with rabies by vampire bats, finds a new study. Emerging Infectious Diseases published the research by disease ecologists at Emory University.
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