Coronavirus is hampering critical work to protect threatened species and habitats worldwide

The lockdown has derailed the eco-tourism that funds many environmental projects, from South America’s rainforests to Africa’s savannahs. “Scientists and conservationists have faced interruptions from big global disasters before, like an earthquake or a coup in one country,” said Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm, founder of the nonprofit Saving Nature. “Ninety-nine percent of these fires are started by people, and it’s mostly done deliberately to open space for illegal cattle ranching,” said Erick Cuellar, deputy director of an alliance of community organizations within Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve called Asociación de Comunidades Forestales de Petén. “Tropical forests are rich in biodiversity, so we’re losing rare flora and fauna,” said Jeremy Radachowsky, director for Mesoamerica at the nonprofit Wildlife Conservation Society. Tropical biologist Patricia Wright notes that conservation isn’t work that can be simply dropped for a while and then picked up again “because it depends so much on relationships with people and local communities.” Wright is a primatologist at Stony Brook University who has spent three decades building a program to study and protect Madagascar’s lemurs — big-eyed primates that live in the wild only on the island.