AS THE ASPIRING primatologist dissected dung samples to de-
termine the animals’ feeding habits, the buzz of chainsaws and
the thwuuuump of falling dipterocarp trees—some of the tallest
species in the world, routinely rising more than 200 feet—broke
through the great apes’ calls. Despite federal protection for the
land, loggers illegally, and extensively, felled trees throughout the
preserve, which sits on the western coast of Borneo. In fact, some
of the local research assistants who helped Webb’s team uncover
scat were former loggers, including a man named Tadyn (like
most natives, he does not use a surname). One day, he came to her
with a gaping cut in his hand, surprisingly distraught for someone
who had once fought an attacking sun bear—and won. “It wasn’t
that big of a wound,” Webb recalls. “His machete had slipped. But
he had terror in his eyes, the most I’ve ever seen in a person.”
For locals, a minor injury could be life-threatening. They didn’t
have access to tetanus shots or antibiotics, and getting to the
nearest hospital entailed a day’s journey by dugout canoe, fol-
lowed by another on a motorboat and another in a car. Accessingtreatment incurred costs that were astronomical rel-
ative to their incomes, so, around Gunung Palung,
medical emergencies brought out the chainsaws.
Because the protected areas are off-limits to the
wide-scale clearing that has created lucrative palm
oil plantations across Borneo, villagers often cut and
sell the virgin trees. One resident Webb met downed
60 to pay for a relative’s cesarean section. As Tadyn
told her, “We don’t have any other choice.”
As she continued her work in the Bornean forests
in the intervening decades, Webb would discover an-
other consequence of the tree-chopping economy:
Pervasive illegal logging can also threaten public
health. Disease ecologists increasingly agree that
human disturbance of wildlands increases the risk
of zoonotic diseases—pathogens that jump from
animals to people—which helps explain why spill-
over events, as epidemiologists call them, are on the
rise around the globe. The number of fauna-borne
outbreaks quadrupled between 1980 and 2010, ac-
cording to a 2014 analysis from Brown University,
and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
says that three-quarters of human illnesses discov-
ered in recent decades originated in wildlife. The
US Agency for International Development’s PRE-
DICT program estimates that animals harbor some
700,000 as- yet- unidentified infectious baddies with
the potential to make the jump to people. It takes
only one of those to change the world.
We’ve traded pathogens with other creatures for
millennia, but in the past, if an outbreak did occur, PREVIOUS SPREAD: BRYAN WATT; THIS SPREAD, FROM LEFT: CAM WEBB; STEPHANIE GEE (2)IN THE EARLY 1990S,
Kinari Webb took a year
off college to join ainINDONESIA’S
Harvard researcher
rainforested GUNUNG
74 WINTER 2020 / POPSCI.COM
studying orangutans
PALUNG National Park.