Climate Emergency Could Cause Wildlife Relocations That Spark Next Pandemic

Over two years into the Covid-19 crisis, an analysis revealed Thursday how the climate emergency is expected to push wild animals into regions more heavily populated with humans, conditions that could spread viruses across species and even lead to future pandemics.

"This mechanism adds yet another layer to how climate change will threaten human and animal health, said Gregory Albery, the paper's co-lead author and a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, in a statement.

"It's unclear exactly how these new viruses might affect the species involved," he added, "but it's likely that many of them will translate to new conservation risks and fuel the emergence of novel outbreaks in humans."