 I helped organize a group of researchers from a variety of related disciplines to ask the question can we suppress the emergence of pandemic pathogens like what we're experiencing now with COVID-19 and for that reason we focused on where the viruses come from. Not just viruses but in this particular case particularly a group of pathogens called zoonoses which means they come into the human population from animals. A lot of the novel viruses are coming from wildlife especially when we catch the wildlife to eat them or we destroy their habitat so they begin to forage in our farms and agricultural areas at which point they're exposed to our domestic livestock which can serve as a bridge between the wild animal harboring the virus and humans. And the other place that happens is in markets where wild animals that are viral reservoirs are kept in close proximity with livestock either to be eaten themselves or else the livestock is contacted by butchers and then they catch the virus from the livestock. We looked at the cost of arresting deforestation of regulating the trade in wild bushmeat and reducing incursions into the forest but the key to the whole thing is that people living at the forest edge should have a good life, should have access to decent livelihoods, good health care and that their children can be educated. Our team which is really a great team includes conservation scientists and economists and the economists were really put to the grindstone here. Through a series of very very careful costings and calculations we estimate that it would cost an investment of between 22 and 30 billion dollars a year to make the edges of the forest safe to the rest of humanity and serving the local population well. Now that may sound like a lot of money but let's remember the cost of a single pandemic is in the trillions and possibly the teens of trillions of dollars a year to get rid of the pandemic to suppress it and to go back to normal life. Deforestation can be slowed down and even reversed. In forests that are largely intact like much of the Amazon these areas can be managed to reduce deforestation through governance through laws and through monitoring from orbital assets like satellites and in Brazil this was very very successful until recently deforestation in Brazil had come way down. So we have to I mean I would say end the trade in wildlife but that's not reasonable across the board so greatly curtail it and closely regulate all other kinds of trade and wildlife that are potential pathogen vectors. That is doable. It means patrols against poaching in the forest itself. It means changes in the way the markets work and it means enforcement of international laws on the sale of threatened and endangered species. So right now a lot of the funding they're like a spider web of intersecting interests and funding sources and the spider web is not tight enough to catch everything that needs to be caught. So I think that the key here is a coordinated global effort with consistent funding.