Scientists Bio

Dr. Jim Desmond is a consulting veterinarian with EcoHealth Alliance. Dr. Desmond’s primary role is to conduct disease surveillance in wildlife populations to better understand the transmission risks associated with different species and interfaces. Through this work, Dr. Desmond has investigated the wildlife trade industry on a local level from central Africa to southern China as it one of the most important interfaces between humans and wildlife.

Dr. Desmond has a strong interest in animal welfare and conservation and when not working for EcoHealth Alliance, he provides consulting services to a number of other organizations, including the Humane Society of the United States, Jane Goodall Institute, Veterinarians without Borders, Pan African Sanctuary Alliance and several individual member sanctuaries, and Smithsonian Institution. He currently lives in East Africa with his wife and dog and they routinely care for a number of wild animals through one of the many wildlife rehabilitation and rescue organizations with which they collaborate.

The intersection between human, animal and environmental health is growing in importance as the general public is beginning to recognize that a disease outbreak in one part of the world may quickly have an impact globally. By trying to understand, and mitigate, the wildlife trade industry, Dr. Desmond hopes to protect human health and keep wildlife where they belong – in the wild.

When veterinarian [Dr. James Stephen Desmond (born 1971)], V08, VG08, and his wife, Jenny, first arrived in Liberia in July 2015 to care for a group of chimpanzees, the situation they found brought them to tears. “It was horrible,” recalled Jim. “The chimps were desperate. You’d come up with a boat to bring them food, and the chimps would go crazy trying to climb in to grab it. And they were fighting each other, because there just wasn’t enough to go around.”

For thirty years, chimpanzees kept at the Liberian Institute for Biomedical Research served as research subjects for hepatitis B vaccine studies conducted by the New York Blood Center. In 2006, the blood center halted its experiments, retiring the apes to six nearby islands within an estuarine habitat with extensive mangrove forests. For nearly a decade, former lab staff cared for the animals, which were wholly dependent on humans for food and fresh water. Then, in March 2015, the blood center cut off all funds. The staff—who kept on caring for the chimps, unpaid—knew all the animals were likely to die if they couldn’t find anyone to help.

No one knows what would have happened if not for the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which started in Guinea in December 2013 and raged across the neighboring countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone, killing more than 11,000 people. Because the former hepatitis research operation was one of the few laboratories in Liberia—a nation torn apart by a 14-year civil war—researchers from international health agencies used it to conduct Ebola research. The chimpanzees’ head caretaker, Joseph Thomas, who had worked with the animals since the 1970s, brought visiting scientists out on his boat to witness the chimps’ distress firsthand, and begged them for money to buy both food and the fuel needed to bring it to the animals. One of those scientists alerted the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).

The HSUS and a coalition of 40 organizations responded by trying to find someone to manage the chimps on-site and soon found that the short list of qualified people was short indeed, said Doug Cress, then the director of the United Nations’ Great Ape Survival Project. At the top of that list were Jim and [Dr. James Stephen Desmond (born 1971)]: Over fifteen years, they had cared for gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and other primates at eight sanctuaries in seven countries around the world. When several organizations came together to create a sanctuary for eastern lowland gorillas in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cress had recommended the Desmonds because they could whip up community support like no one else, even from such a remote facility: on top of a mountain, miles from the nearest city or airfield, the nearest neighbors often rebel armies. Just as important as that experience, Cress said, was that the couple knew when they’d need to adjust their approach for an entirely new climate.

But as it turned out, the plight of the former lab chimps wasn’t the only crisis to contend with in Liberia. During a five-week intervention Jim and Jenny undertook before signing on to the job, something unexpected happened: Locals brought them two infant chimps that had been kept as pets in deplorable conditions. Over time, more and more came in—today, 17 of them have been confiscated by the Forestry Development Authority, the government agency tasked with protecting wildlife and enforcing wildlife laws in Liberia. Most of the animals are only two or three years old, and all are victims of poachers illegally hunting adult chimpanzees for meat and selling their young offspring as pets. The orphaned chimps’ history is not just tragic; it’s also a troubling indicator of what lies ahead for western chimpanzees, a critically endangered subspecies that saw its numbers in the wild decline by 80 percent between 1990 and 2014.

The Desmonds came to understand that they were ideally situated to help combat the problem. First, they had the vast stores of experience they would need to help build a sanctuary for the chimps from the ground up. Second, they happened to be in one of the best possible places for such a sanctuary to be built. The years of unrest in Liberia has meant that much of the chimpanzees’ habitat there has been protected from development. Of the roughly thirty-five thousand western chimpanzees that still live in West Africa, seven thousand are estimated to inhabit this one small country. “It’s the only country in West Africa where large tracts of the Upper Guinean forests still remain intact,” Jim said.

So today, more than two years after setting foot in the war-torn nation, Jim and Jenny have no plans to leave. Liberia: Come for the desperate chimps abandoned on mangrove islands, stay for the desperate chimps orphaned by poachers—it’s not a pitch for a kind of life most people would find irresistible. But the Desmonds aren’t most people.

Anyone looking in from the outside would assume that Jim and Jenny have always worked in wildlife conservation. But Jim was a well-paid recent chemistry grad employed in pharma in 1994 when he met Jenny, who was leading trainings on large-scale fund-raising around the U.S. Within a year after meeting, the two married.

Their lives changed course on an around-the-world honeymoon. At an orangutan sanctuary in Borneo, Jim met [Dr. Annelisa Marcelle Kilbourn (born 1967)], V96, who was working with veterinarian [Dr. William Bamberger Karesh (born 1955)] and virologist [Dr. Nathan Daniel Wolfe (born 1970)] to look for diseases that great apes might pass on to humans and vice versa. (Kilbourn, whose research provided the first evidence that Ebola threatened wild gorillas, died in a 2002 plane crash [Linked to http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/05/nyregion/annelisa-m-kilbourn-35-dies-tied-ebola-to-death-of-gorillas.html , saved here as PDF : [HN020U][GDrive] ].) Jim couldn’t stop thinking about the encounter. If he could do the kind of work that Kilbourn was doing, he could apply his scientific mind to a cause he felt passionate about. But first he would need to go to veterinary school to build the proper foundation.

Jenny took the bold step of writing the famous primatologist Jane Goodall to ask for advice on how Jim might gain experience with African wildlife to strengthen his applications. “Jane’s assistant, the wonderful Mary Lewis, wrote me back with a personal message from Jane,” Jenny recalled. Goodall referred the couple to Debby Cox, then the director of the Jane Goodall Institute, who took them in as managers of the Uganda Wildlife Education Centre. “From that day forward,” Jenny said, “our lives were never the same.”

Jim was determined to go to Cummings School, and when he didn’t get in on his first try, he turned down an acceptance from another respected veterinary school to reapply. “If you wanted a different kind of career in veterinary medicine, Tufts was the place to go,” he said. After he was accepted to Cummings in 2003, he enrolled in a dual-degree program that allows students to earn a D.V.M. alongside a master’s in comparative biomedical sciences over five years. A Dr. Henry L. Foster Scholarship helped Jim pursue his new path by lessening some of his debt.

A year after graduating in 2008, Jim landed his dream job with EcoHealth Alliance, which conducts international research into the relationships between wildlife, ecosystems, and human health. For six years, he and Jenny spent months at a time in China, Indonesia, and Myanmar while Jim tested domestic animals for pathogens, conducted avian influenza surveillance, and investigated wildlife markets as sources of animal diseases that could spread to people. The Desmonds also became the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance’s go-to unit in times of crisis. “It just seemed there was no task too big for those two,” said Cress, who served as executive director for the association of primate rescue centers and sanctuaries across Africa.

A Dr. Henry L. Foster Scholarship helped [Dr. James Stephen Desmond (born 1971)] pursue a new path in wildlife veterinary medicine. Photo: Jenny Desmond

In 2015, the HSUS approached the couple, then working in Kenya, about the position in Liberia. “We didn’t say yes right away,” said Jim, explaining that they were happy in Kenya and had just been offered a job managing a conservation center there. But a five-week intervention turned into a yearlong contract with the HSUS, and then another.

Their work turned the situation around for the former lab chimps. The Desmonds not only made sure the animals got enough food; they corrected the unnatural feeding schedule that was causing so much stress. “The chimps were getting fed only every other day,” said Jim. Within a few months of daily feedings, the chimps were relaxed and coexisting peacefully, and now, said Jim, “they’ve put on weight and their coats have a glossy sheen.” Jim also instituted a much-needed—and so far successful—birth control plan. The chimpanzees were having babies, which was “really not a good situation,” he said, “because each new chimp will live fifty to sixty years in captivity.”

In May 2017, the HSUS came to an agreement with the blood center. The HSUS would assume lifetime care of the lab chimps, supported by $6 million from the blood center. Five months later, the Desmonds’ second consulting contract with the HSUS ended and was not renewed. They decided to stay in Liberia anyway. EcoHealth in November 2015 had tapped Jim to lead a new project there aimed at finding the species that keeps the Ebola virus circulating in nature between outbreaks in humans. And they were devoted to helping the orphaned wild chimpanzees.

The decision to stay in Liberia was not one they took lightly. “It would’ve been a lot more fun to stay in East Africa,” Jim said. In their five years living along Lake Victoria and the white sands of Diani Beach, the Desmonds frequently had friends and family visiting, and savannah safaris in national parks were only a short drive away. “We miss it sometimes,” Jim said. “But this is where we were meant to be, I think.”

In addition to the couple’s work with chimpanzees, Jim has had his hands full with his infectious disease research. The Liberia study seeks to test eighteen thousand bats for Ebola by the end of 2019, which has meant Jim has had to assemble the right research team: ten research technicians, two social scientists, an administrator, and five drivers. “The only non-Liberian who works on the project in Liberia is me,” Jim said. Given the brain drain that resulted from the country’s civil war, this “has been our biggest success so far.” He noted that the team operates independently, and “now the people we’ve trained can train other Liberians.”

Jonathan Epstein, V02, MG02, the associate vice president of conservation medicine at EcoHealth, said, “Jim is very committed to making sure that our local in-country team is both highly trained and also well mentored. He’s right there with them in the field and the office, teaching them about every aspect of the project from animal capture to sample storage to data management.” That’s important, Epstein said, because “ultimately, Liberia will have to be prepared to handle the next zoonotic disease outbreak, whether it’s Ebola or something entirely new.”

As for the sanctuary project, it’s well on its way. Recently, the Desmonds formally registered Liberia Chimpanzee Rescue and Protection as a Liberian NGO—the country’s first and only sanctuary for wild chimpanzee victims of the bushmeat and pet trades. The orphaned chimpanzees currently live on the grounds of the National Public Health Institute of Liberia, where the couple cared for the former lab chimps. Jim and Jenny hope to remain there for up to a year while they raise money. Leveraging Jenny’s grant-writing experience, they’re applying for funding and hoping to establish a trust overseen by board members from local and international animal-welfare and conservation organizations. Their first goal will be to lease a parcel of community land they’ve identified. “Right now, our sanctuary consists of a bunch of enclosures with outside play areas and full-time caregivers,” explained Jim. “But hopefully we will be able to move soon and build the infrastructure so the chimps can play out in the forest.”

The effects could be far-reaching. A 2013 International Fund for Animal Welfare report found that the illegal wildlife trade internationally generates an estimated $19 billion per year—globally, it is organized crime’s fourth most lucrative activity, behind narcotics, counterfeiting, and human trafficking. Sanctuaries are invaluable in the fight against such activities, because without them, officials don’t know what to do with any animals they might confiscate. “Since African governments generally don’t have facilities to care for live wildlife, law enforcement officials tend not to arrest animal traffickers,” said Gregg Tully, executive director of the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance. “We’ve found that wildlife law enforcement is typically weaker in countries that don’t have sanctuaries. Liberia was one of these countries until Jim and Jenny Desmond began to rescue confiscated chimpanzees.”

Jim also believes Liberia’s new sanctuary could contribute to public health and safety throughout the world. “There is a live great ape trade, and some of these orphaned chimps could’ve been shipped off to China or the Middle East,” which could spread diseases like Ebola far beyond Liberia’s borders, he said. “And it’s not like these traffickers only specialize in animals; they also traffic in drugs, guns, and humans. If we can help break up the networks, we are not only protecting wildlife, but also doing a lot to disrupt organized crime groups funding terrorist networks and other activities.”

Much work remains to be done, but there are encouraging signs. Liberia passed a wildlife law at the end of 2016, and a group is now writing the regulations that will govern its implementation. And Jenny, who serves on a law-enforcement task force, has written grant applications for money to train the Forestry Development Authority on fighting trafficking activities.

The work is not easy and is often exhausting. Jim and Jenny don’t mind, though. “It’s exciting to know that what you’re doing can have a big impact,” Jim said. “We’re super busy, but happy.”

In the spring of 2013, a newly pathogenic H7N9 influenza virus emerged in people in China, likely associated with wild and domestic birds (Kageyama et al. 2013). Marking the exact scenario that public health experts had feared— people were being infected, getting sick, and dying without the source of the virus being rapidly and definitively identified. In the absence of a clear understanding of the mode of transmission, early control of this epidemic proved difficult, especially since the most likely suspect reservoirs, animals being sold in markets, were not

exhibiting the signs of illness that would help officials target mitigation measures and help citizens avoid exposure. Strict safety measures were enacted, including closures of markets that sell live birds and culling of animals in areas where patients have been diagnosed with confirmed cases. The associated costs of control and treatment of the sick, including secondary loss of poultry, were increased because interventions could not be efficiently targeted at the source of infection or the drivers of the virus’ emergence from that source.

Scientific and official responses to H7N9 influenza highlight the significant advances in infectious disease management in China and around the world. WHO’s global influenza surveillance network and the International Health Regulations requirements for rapid reporting have greatly increased the candidness of reporting; today there is also a greater openness of global scientific collaboration due to the previous experiences with the SARS and H5N1 [ ... ]

• Recommendations are the result of Collaborative Workshop on the Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease sponsored by both the US and China’s National Science Foundations in Kunming, China, October 2012. Apart from Emily A. Hagan all authors were in attendance and participated in the workshop.

In March 2015, the New York Blood Center (NYBC) abandoned sixty-six chimpanzees, some of whom they’d been experimenting on for more than thirty years. They left them on uninhabited islands in Liberia, Africa, without food or fresh water. The chimpanzees — who had been forced to endure invasive, painful experiments and had been injected with HIV, hepatitis, and West Nile viruses — were left to die. An American researcher who was in Liberia to address the Ebola virus crisis saw what was happening to the chimpanzees and called on friends in the United States for help. A coalition of more than thirty-five animal welfare and conservation organizations joined forces. Together with animal rights activists, they launched a global campaign demanding that NYBC honor its commitment to provide for the individuals it had discarded. When NYBC refused, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) stepped in with a fundraising campaign and hired Jenny and Jim Desmond to oversee the chimpanzees’ care.

I first learned about Jenny while reading about the Liberian chimpanzees in an article written by Karen Lange in All Animals magazine. Wanting to know more, I reached out to Jenny, and over lengthy emails, we bonded.

Jenny’s connection with chimpanzees began when she was seven years old and her mother gave her Jane Goodall’s first book, My Friends the Wild Chimpanzees. Her mother inscribed it: “To my very own little Jane Goodall.” Shortly after that, Jenny announced to her uncle that when she grew up she planned to live in the jungle with monkeys.

Jenny spent her childhood in Manhattan Beach, California, where she ran around the house on all fours wanting to be an animal. Her parents, though not animal lovers the way she was, still nurtured her love for and connection with animals. However, when the number of rescue animals living in the house reached an all-time high of twenty-two, Jenny and her animals moved into a cabana behind the house.

Jenny’s dream of working with animals came true unexpectedly. She met a man in Boston, and they went on an around-the-world backpacking adventure. Then, in Africa, they were asked to parent an orphaned chimpanzee they named Matooke, and they both found their calling.

• • •

Entebbe, Uganda

I wanted a career where I could be around animals. There were plenty of options, but none of them worked for me. I didn’t want to work in a zoo because I couldn’t stand seeing caged animals. The obvious choice of veterinarian was off the table because I’d passed out three times at the vet clinic when my animals were being treated. I am definitely not a math and science person, but I still decided to study wildlife biology in college. When I realized it was all science and that job opportunities included positions like game park ranger (deciding on numbers of hunting licenses to issue each year), researcher (I am not a patient observer), or working in a lab (yuck!), that option flew out the window. I guess I gave up on an animal-related career at that point.

I ended up changing my major to social work, moving to Boston after school, and working in sales and marketing. That’s when I met Jimmy Desmond at a brewery. Jimmy was a chemist. We connected over a mutual love for beer, parties, and socializing with friends. It was pretty much love at first sight. It wasn’t until we got married and took an around-the-world backpacking trip that our journey with wildlife began.

It had always been a dream of mine to see great apes in the wild. So, on that trip, we visited orangutans at the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre on the island of Borneo, Malaysia. The experience was so exciting, we ended up volunteering there and working with veterinarian Annelisa Kilbourn. Jimmy became so enthralled with her work rescuing great apes and studying disease transmission between humans and other apes that he realized he wanted to become a veterinarian. At the same time, I was introduced to the world of wildlife rescue, rehabilitation, and conservation of wild populations and found my path. I suddenly saw there was a way for me to put my passion for animals to use. It was a true sign of fate. We had no intention of doing what we do today, and yet we met, fell in love, got married, and embarked on a journey around the world together. It is only on that trip that we found our way at the same time as one.

To get some experience as wildlife rehabilitators, I wrote to Jane Goodall for advice, and to my surprise, she wrote back! She connected us with our now dear friend Debby Cox, and we ended up in Uganda, Africa, managing a rhino reintroduction and sanctuary program at Uganda Wildlife Education Centre [UWEC] in Entebbe. And that’s where we met Matooke.

UWEC works with the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary and has chimps on-site, as well as rhinoceros. They take in wildlife confiscated by authorities and rehabilitate and release the animals when it’s possible.

One day we were called to pick up a male eastern chimpanzee who, we were told, was in poor condition. We didn’t know his history. We guessed his mother was killed, likely for bush meat, because a mother chimpanzee will never willingly give up her child. By his condition and age — estimated between two and three years old — we suspected he’d been taken as an infant and kept as a “pet” for one or two years in a village. We found him in awful condition. He was in a dog crate, sitting in his own feces and urine, with a lot of hair loss. He was extremely thin and very depressed. Usually chimps like this have come from villages where they haven’t been nurtured, fed, or treated well and end up physically sick and mentally unstable. He was in very bad shape, and his sadness was clear in his eyes.

When the young chimpanzee was reported to UWEC and the Ngamba Sanctuary, there was no one on-site available to care for him. He needed to be nurtured and quarantined for three months. We were asked if we would be willing to take him and give him around-the- clock care. We agreed, and our adventure with him began.

We took the little boy, still in the dog crate, to the inside of our hut at the back of the rescue center. He was no different than a traumatized human child who’d witnessed the murder of his family, been kidnapped, then been held captive and teased for years. In addition, this had been done to him by a different species, one he didn’t know or understand. He was devastated and did not trust anyone, including me. Jimmy and I took on the role of father and mother for him, and as we saw it, our job was to bring him back to life.

He wouldn’t come out of the crate, let me touch him, or take much food or water from me. The only type of food he would eat was a fruit similar to a banana called matooke, so that’s what we named him. For nearly a week, he sat at the back of the crate, and I lay at the front with the door open. Hours and hours passed, and then days and days. It took four days before he let me touch him. It took another two days before he came out of the crate. The day he came out, he let me embrace him and that was that. We connected spiritually, emotionally, and telepathically. We bonded for life.

One day, Matooke accidentally rolled down a hill, and it made me laugh. I watched him register that I had laughed. Then he went right back up and did it again and again and again. He understood he was funny and that it was fun to make someone laugh. Before long, his sense of humor became apparent. He loved being tickled and playing games, and he loved to laugh.

Matooke also loved playing tricks on the dogs who lived on the property. He’d play chase with them and then run up a tree where they clearly couldn’t follow — and then laugh his head off. At night, he often wanted to go to bed before I did. So he’d climb halfway up the ladder to our loft and make crying sounds until I caved and joined him.

After the three-month quarantine period, where he was only allowed to be with us, we began introducing Matooke to other chimpanzees. His new family was comprised of a ragtag group of individuals from various backgrounds. They had been rescued from roadside zoos, poachers, being used as entertainment, and the pet trade. It took a month of bringing him to spend time with the group for the day, then bringing him home with us at night, before he made a choice. One night he decided to stay with his new chimp family instead of coming home with us. He definitely chose to leave us, and it was a great moment.

The fact that, in the end, he chose to be with his own kind was a beautiful and important thing to see and understand. He wanted to be with people who spoke his language, knew who he was and what he was about, and could truly meet his needs and wants. Just like any one of us, he wanted choice, freedom, love, understanding, and dignity.

Matooke is living happily in Uganda at UWEC with a large chimp family. Every time we visit him, he transforms from a big, tough, alpha male to a playful, silly, happy boy. He wants to laugh, be tickled, and play chase, just like before. He has grown up and become a confident, strong, and fulfilled individual.

Matooke changed my life and the life of my husband. He sealed the deal. We were clearly on a path to work with wildlife at the time, but he made it all crystal clear. After knowing him, whenever I saw pictures of little chimp faces in tiny metal boxes in research labs, I saw him. He made all the experiments on animals real. There was no question in either of our minds that we had to act on our love for him, to help others. It was a true epiphany, and there was no turning back once it happened.

• • •

Jenny and her husband, veterinarian Jim Desmond, are the founders of Liberia Chimpanzee Rescue and Protection (LCRP), the first and only chimpanzee sanctuary in Liberia, Africa. They rescue and rehabilitate chimpanzees who are victims of the bush meat and pet trades in that country.

In addition, Jenny and Jim, working with local and international partners, helped create Liberia’s first law enforcement task force and public awareness campaign on wildlife trafficking. Their goals are far-reaching and include developing education awareness efforts to combat the trade of chimpanzees, which continues in Liberia. In their work, they seek to create partnerships with international organizations and country government agencies to develop and support the sanctuary’s facilities and programs. Active locally, they have established successful vaccination and spay/neuter programs. When he’s not napping with chimpanzees, Jim is a researcher in emerging disease.

As a footnote, in 2017, the HSUS reached a financial agreement with NYBC to help provide for the continuing care of the remaining sixty-three chimpanzees it abandoned on islands in Liberia. Humane Society International now oversees the project and has committed to care for the chimpanzees for the rest of their lives.

For the first time, the type of deadly Ebola virus responsible for recent epidemics has been found in a bat in West Africa, Liberian health officials announced on Thursday.

Bats carrying the disease had already been found in Central Africa, and scientists have long suspected that bats were a natural host of Ebola and a source of some human infections in other areas as well. But until now they had not found any bats in West Africa that harbored the epidemic species, known as Zaire ebolavirus.

Although the bat was found in Liberia, the country has not had any human cases of Ebola since 2016, and the bat was not associated with any illness in people.

The finding is preliminary and not yet ready for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, the usual venue for presenting scientific discoveries. Only 20 percent of the bat’s genome has been studied, and research on it is continuing.

But because of its potential impact on public health, officials in Liberia wanted to share the information widely as soon as possible.

“It’s an incomplete study, a work in progress,” said Simon J. Anthony, a virologist at Columbia University who has performed genetic analyses on samples from the infected bat. “It feels premature scientifically, but on the other hand, you have the public health aspect. We do have enough data to suggest to me that it is Ebola Zaire in this bat. We agree with our Liberian government partners that this information should be shared.”

Image : A bat being tested for Ebola. / Credit... EcoHealth Alliance

Knowing which types of bat carry Ebola may help health officials prevent outbreaks by educating the public about how to prevent contact with the creatures, scientists said. The newly implicated bat roosts in caves and mines, so people can be warned to avoid those places.

But Dr. Anthony said there were probably more bat species, with different habitats, that might also carry the virus.

Avoiding caves is clear-cut advice, but other routes of infection may be harder to block: People in many parts of the world eat bats, and may be infected while catching or preparing them for cooking. Hunters and cooks may not be able to tell one bat species from another.

The researchers said the findings did not mean that bats should be exterminated. They protect humans and crops by eating insects and pollinating fruit trees. Disrupting complex ecosystems by slaughtering bats could even make disease outbreaks worse.

Zaire ebolavirus is the cause of the current epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with more than 700 cases and more than 400 deaths. The outbreak, which has spun out of control in a war-torn region, is the second largest ever. The largest, caused by the same Ebola species, occurred in West Africa from 2013 to 2016, infecting nearly 30,000 people and killing 11,000.

The West African epidemic, in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, is thought to have begun with a small boy in Guinea handling an infected bat, but the origin is not known for sure.

A Liberian team in full protective gear — Tyvek suits, gloves, masks, goggles, hoods, boots — trapped and released 5,000 bats from about 10 species. They took samples of blood, urine and feces, and oral swabs.

Dr. Anthony’s lab at Columbia found genetic material from the virus in a mouth swab taken from just one bat, captured in Liberia’s northeastern Nimba District. That animal was a greater long-fingered bat, from the species Miniopterus inflatus, a furry beast the size of a small mouse, weighing half an ounce, with a 12-inch wingspan. It eats insects.

Image : The Predict team, wearing protective gear, sampled a bat in an effort to identify possible carriers of Ebola and other viruses. / Credit... EcoHealth Alliance

Tests also found that the bat had antibodies to the Zaire ebolavirus, an immune system response, providing further evidence that it had been infected.

The research team came from the Liberian government, Columbia University, the University of California, Davis and EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit group that studies emerging diseases that originate in animals and spill over into humans. The research was paid for by the United States Agency for International Development and is part of a project called Predict, which is trying to find viruses before they jump into humans and cause epidemics.

The bat did not appear sick from the virus, and scientists do not know how the animals become infected. The bats and Ebola have probably been associated for a long time and most likely evolved together, said Jonathan Epstein, a veterinarian and EcoHealth Alliance’s vice president for science and outreach.

Laboratory work is still going on to determine whether the virus found in the bat is the exact same strain that caused the large West African epidemic. So far, the 20 percent of the viral genome that has been analyzed closely matches the epidemic strain, Dr. Anthony said.

He said the team had analyzed 3,000 of the 12,000 collected samples from the bats so far.

“We’ve got quite a bit of work to do,” he said.

Bats carry a number of other viruses that are deadly to humans, including rabies, SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), Nipah and Marburg, a relative of Ebola. There is no simple answer as to why.

“That’s a question for the ages,” Dr. Epstein said. “People may think of bats as one animal, but there are more than 1,400 different kinds of bats.”

Bats account for 20 percent of all mammalian species.

“They’re an ancient order of mammals that have been around for millions of years,” Dr. Epstein said. “In terms of evolutionary time scales, they’ve spent a long time with these viruses, and there’s lots of opportunity for contact with livestock or people.”

Last year, researchers involved in the Predict project found the Marburg virus in fruit bats in Sierra Leone, the first time Marburg was detected in West Africa. Predict scientists also discovered a previously unknown Ebola species in Sierra Leone — Bombali ebolavirus — in bug-eating bats that roost inside people’s houses.

Neither discovery was linked to an outbreak in people, which the scientists said was exactly what they hoped to accomplish: finding viruses before they sicken people. They said the Bombali virus had the potential to infect humans.

• Correction: Jan. 24, 2019 : An earlier version of this article mischaracterized the discovery of a bat carrying the Ebola virus. The finding in Liberia was the first time the virus had been found in a bat in West Africa, not the first time it had ever been found in a bat. It had already been found in bats in Central Africa.

I'm a public health expert.

I study emerging diseases like Ebola like coronavirus.

I've worked in China studying coronavirus.

The problem that is happening right now... everyone in the world is is worried about the coronavirus that's spreading globally at the global pandemic coronavirus

Ebola, Marburg virus Nipah virus many many diseases... the the scary diseases that people hear about on the news... they come from wildlife. Ok, specifically Coronvirus. A coronavirus comes from bats going into ants bears, ok ? hiv/aids came from chimpanzees many many years ago. Ebola comes from bats. So all of these diseases.... the way that those diseases get into human beings is because human beings interact with the wildlife through hunting... through selling... through different different ways... and it's very dangerous. It's not just about that it's illegal.... it's about that it's a serious public health threat.

I don't think anyone in Liberia or in West Africa wants to go through what happened during the Ebola crisis a few years ago and I think the rest of the world is waking up to the fact that this corona virus not only is it killing many many people... tens of thousands... we don't know what the death toll will be but it's also costing the world trillions and trillions of dollars okay?

So these diseases they come from somewhere and they come from wildlife

Daniel J. Desmond left an indelible mark on the lives of many and his beloved Portland, “that beautiful town that is seated by the sea,” his home of 73 years. Dan died peacefully at his home in Falmouth, comforted by his family, on Sunday February 10, 2019 after a long struggle with cancer.

Dan was born on February 8, 1946 in Portland, Maine. He attended Cheverus High School, graduating cum laude in 1964. After high school, he attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, graduating with a degree in history in 1968. He then became a commissioned officer in the United States Navy after attending Officer’s Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island. He served with distinction during the Vietnam War, and always remembered his service to his country with pride, noting that it was a privilege and an honor to wear the uniform. Following an honorable discharge from the Naval Reserve, Dan earned his Juris Doctorate from the University of Maine Law School in Portland, graduating in 1974.

Dan practiced law for over four decades, serving as President of the Cumberland County Bar Association, a post his father also held before him. He served as President of the Board of Trustees for Westbrook Community Hospital and Public Administrator for Cumberland County, and served in many prominent roles throughout his esteemed career.

Dan was a lifelong member of the Portland Country Club where he enjoyed playing golf with his many friends. He loved Maine and Portland, the unpredictable weather as an armchair meteorologist and his New England sports teams, following them from a young age on his Crystal radio. He was loved and admired for his humility, kindness, easy manner and wonderful sense of humor. It was these qualities that made him an instant friend. He had so many friends, and they were all his best friends. He was very respectful of all that life encompassed - he was special in every sense of the word. We never knew anyone who did not love Dan.

Dan will be sorely missed, most of all by those closest to him. He was a wonderful father and husband. His greatest joy and accomplishment were his children, and he was never happier than when spending time with his family. Most important was the relationship that he had with his best friend and companion for 48 years, Cheryl “Lover”, where he derived all the love that anyone needed.

Dan led a very full and happy life. He enriched the lives of so many and they equally enriched his.

Dan was predeceased by his parents, Elizabeth and James Desmond; his sister, Ellen Desmond Stone; his beloved daughter, Elizabeth Desmond McKee. He is survived by his wife, of forty eight years, Cheryl Morin Desmond; his sons, Dr. James Desmond and wife Jenny of Liberia, Africa, Sean Desmond and wife Briona of Virginia; four grandchildren, Fionn, Ellen, and Davan Desmond, and Fallon McKee and her dad, Michael McKee. He is also survived by his sister, Alice Harris and her husband Charles of Beverly, Massachusetts. He leaves behind many nieces and nephews and extended family. [...]