News Ecosystems

A new road map shows how to prevent pandemics

Keeping ecosystems healthy can minimize viral jumps between wildlife and humans

A spectacled flying fox

Hendra virus can jump from spectacled flying foxes (one shown) to horses to humans when the fruit bats seek out food sources in agricultural or urban areas during winter.

By Brianna Randall

Want to limit the transfer of viruses between animals and humans? A new report gives examples of how to do that by keeping ecosystems intact.

The pandemic prevention road map, published March 26 in Nature Communications, recommends protecting or restoring places where animals forage and rest, and minimizing human-wildlife encounters in more developed areas.