The coronavirus pandemic has generated overwhelming support for the closure of markets selling illegal wildlife across Southeast Asia, an epicenter of the multi-billion-dollar trade, the World Wildlife Fund said in a public opinion poll on Monday. About 93 per cent of about 5,000 people surveyed by WWF in March across three Southeast Asian nations as well as Hong Kong and Japan said unregulated markets selling wildlife should be shuttered to ward off future pandemics.
Scientists believe the virus that has upturned the lives of billions across the globe originated in a wildlife market, likely in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where bats, pangolins, and other animals known to transmit coronaviruses are crammed together in fetid conditions. Support for a crackdown on markets was strongest in Myanmar, where wildlife has for years been traded openly in the autonomous regions bordering China, while a third of respondents in Vietnam said the crisis had prompted them to stop consuming wildlife products.
In the wake of the outbreak, which began in Wuhan and has since spanned the globe, China introduced a ban on all farming and consumption of live wildlife, but it does not cover the trade in animals as pets, and for traditional medicine.
Source: Reuters
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