In 2017, the Cinta Raja site was bare. The only signs of life in the forest’s depleted soil were stumps of macheted oil palm trees and some hardy grasses. The restoration site in Sumatra, Indonesia is part of the Leuser Ecosystem—2.6 million hectares of tropical rainforest and one of the last places on Earth that the endangered Sumatran elephant, rhino, tiger, and orangutan call home.

The ecosystem itself is in danger after companies extracted everything from palm oil to rubber. As the forest disappears, animals die or are forced to search for food on new frontiers. The more than 4 million people who live in the area get closer.

And that poses another threat: the next pandemic. A growing body of scientific evidence links deforestation to the increased spread of infectious diseases like COVID-19. And people are felling forests at an alarming rate.

“The spread of oil palm plantations into critical orangutan habitat is the single greatest threat to the species,” Panut Hadisiswoyo of the nonprofit Sumatran Orangutan Society wrote in a report in 2012. The nonprofit works to protect forests and the orangutans that live in them at the Cinta Raja site and across Sumatra’s Gunung Leuser National Park.

Read the full article about preventing deforestation and the next pandemic by Merinda Valley at GlobalGiving.