Post #4358494

The fatal Hendra virus was an infamous spillover from bats to horses to humans in Australia in the 1990s. Since then, ecologists, bat experts and virologists have learned a lot about these events, perhaps including mitigating strategies. “The findings suggested that planting eucalyptus trees that feed bats in winter, when food elsewhere is scarce, could help prevent spillover by drawing bats from all over the country. When there are rare pulses of flowering in remnant winter habitat, the bats leave the cities and farms, and go back to native habitat. Every time this happened in the 25-year study period, there were no spillover events. A pulse of winter flowers rich enough to draw more than 100,000 flying foxes to an individual roost would substantially reduce the risk of spillover, the researchers concluded. And it is possible that a sufficiently large tract of eucalypts could protect the entire country from the virus.” https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/aug/03/hendra-virus-australia-sentinels-book-extract-animal-to-human-disease-spread