Fabian Leendertz, a veterinarian who has helped trace the origin of some of the world’s deadliest disease outbreaks, has been named the 2020 Champion of the Earth for Science and Innovation.
Leendertz has led ground-breaking investigations into pathogens like Anthrax and Ebola, exploring how the contagions jump between animals and humans. He led a group of researchers who tracked a 2014 outbreak of Ebola back to a single, bat-filled tree in Guinea.
“What is amazing is to do science that has an effect,” said Leendertz. “Doing work in an innovative environment, that I can see in my lifetime is having an effect, is really motivating.”
Leendertz became interested in zoonotic diseases – contagions that vault between humans and animals – while doing PhD research on chimpanzees in Côte D'Ivoire. That started a lifelong career in primate ecology and pathogens, the micro-organisms that transmit disease.
“I started with a focus on the health and disease of these wild chimpanzees,” explains Leendertz. “From there it was the logical next step to see if the pathogens we find in great apes would also be found in the human population, and to learn where the pathogens come from.”
He now heads the eponymous Leendertz Lab focusing on zoonosis at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin. His team investigates the sources and reservoirs of microorganisms in wild primates and other animals, and their transmission between species. Leendertz was recently named as one of ten researchers selected by the World Health Organization (WHO) to investigate the source of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Investigating the source of Ebola
In 2014, days after Ebola was confirmed in Guinea, Leendertz led a team of 17 anthropologists, ecologists and vets charged with finding the source of the virus outbreak. Their work centred on the village of Meliandou, where some of the earliest cases were found.
“When we told the residents we were there to find out how this had happened they were keen to assist,” he explains. “They helped guide our team, because they know their village, they know where the animals are.”
Their information helped the team track the outbreak from what scientists believed was patient zero, a two-year-old boy in Meliandou, to a tree home to a colony of Angolan free-tailed bats. These bats are suspected to be one of the Ebola reservoir species.
Leendertz is quick to credit the local scientists across Africa that he collaborates with on these pathogen investigations. These interdisciplinary teams with their multifaceted approaches have been key to tracing the origins of diseases.
Leendertz incorporates a One Health approach to his work on zoonotic disease outbreaks. This means integrating public health, veterinary medicine and environmental expertise. His lab is part of the African Network for Improved Diagnostics, Epidemiology and Management of Common Infectious Agents. Working with four partner countries – Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Africa – the network helps states detect, respond to and prevent common infectious diseases, including COVID-19.
The increasing risk of pandemics
During his two decades in the field, Leendertz says diseases with “pandemic potential” are increasingly threatening humanity.
Urban population growth, agricultural encroachment and illegal mining are destroying the buffer zones that separate humans from wild animals, even in and around national parks. “With more people and more presence in the parks, the risk of micro-organisms and the exchange of pathogens between humans and wildlife is a rising risk.”
Once a disease makes the jump, its potential to become a pandemic is also mounting, he says. “People are more connected. There is better accessibility to remote areas, so if you have a spill over from a pathogen to the human population it is easier for it to reach a big city and from there to travel around the world.”
Leendertz cautions diseases can also jump from people to animals, sometimes with devastating effects. Great apes he was studying at the Taï National Park in Côte d'Ivoire, for example, were inadvertently being infected by guides and researchers. Leendertz’s work resulted in the 2015 publication of hygiene and training guidelines for humans, including tourists, who enter national parks with great apes.
He and 25 experts also published a letter in Nature calling for tourism and research trips to be halted amid COVID-19, fearing the disease could vault into the ape population. They noted, “Such efforts should include ways to offset loss of earnings from tourism, while taking care not to interfere with work to save human lives.”
“2020 has shown us how devastating pandemics are to our lives and our economies. The research Dr. Leendertz has conducted over the past two decades is crucial in helping us understand not only where these diseases come from, but also what is causing them,” said United Nations Environment Programme Executive Director Inger Andersen. “The science is clear that if we keep exploiting wildlife and destroying our ecosystems, then we can expect to see a steady stream of zoonotic diseases in the years ahead. To prevent future outbreaks, we must protect and restore our natural environment.”
Leendertz says everyone can help protect wild animals through their consumer choices and the politicians they support. “Environment, human and animal health are connected,” he says. “We need to see this bigger picture and support those who work and fight to protect and restore nature.”
The United Nations Environment Programme’s Champions of the Earth and the Young Champions of the Earth honour individuals, groups and organizations whose actions have a transformative impact on the environment.
The annual Champions of the Earth award is the UN’s highest environmental honour. It recognizes outstanding leaders from government, civil society and the private sector. Fabian Leendertz is one of six laureates announced in December 2020, on the cusp of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030.
By showcasing news of the significant work being done on the environmental frontlines, the Champions of the Earth awards aim to inspire and motivate more people to act for nature. The awards are part of UNEP’s #ForNature campaign to rally momentum for the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) in Kunming in May 2021, and catalyze climate action all the way to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow in November 2021.
