The number of endangered species and the general extinction of various species all around the world are continuously accelerating, directly and / or indirectly because of human activities. Strictly speaking climate changes, biological impoverishment as well as the steady and rapid global movement of people, animals and many other living organisms and species are only few reasons that have synergistically caused the reduction and diminishment of the ecosystem function. Consequently, this has resulted in a multitude of different diseases which represented a dangerous threat to the survival, health and general living of all global species.
In response to this global threats and problems, the international organization and conservation leader Wildlife Trust focused a new field in great demand – strictly speaking the Conservation Medicine. Conservation Medicine represents a new medical discipline that is aimed at the examination of links and relations between wildlife and humans, the health of ecosystems and the general ecology. In the strict sense, Wildlife Trust as a conservation science innovator and its Conservation Medicine Programs played an important role in both achieving healthy ecosystems and their sustainability and in maintaining the valuable heritage of biodiversity.
Wildlife Trust was carefully working on the creation and development of a system of interacting Conservation Medicine Centres of Excellence (CMCE). Regionally based in universities, ecological associations and organizations as well as research institutes, these Conservation Medicine Centres of Excellence provided different perspectives and comprehensive know-how from a multitude of social, health and natural sciences.
The Conservation Medicine Centres of Excellence facilitated great research activities in order to identify useful practices for successfully reducing both ecosystem and health risks:
- The Centres informed local communities about the relations between environmental and ecological change and public health. They emphasized those factors and aspects that produce and / or provoke specific disease outbreaks.
- The Centres encouraged young scientists to move from general research work to policy.
- The Centres trained science experts and professionals from fields such as environment, health, and agriculture to learn more about the principal causes of disease emergence.