THE LESSON PLAN

In this lesson plan, students will be taught how the occurrence of newly emerging infectious diseases like COVID-19 with zoonotic (vertebrate animal to human) transmission are rising due to the closer interactions of humans and wild animals that result in an increased exposure to animal viruses. Greater human-animal conflicts are largely due to environmental changes such as habitat degradation and biodiversity loss caused by anthropogenic activities. Through this lesson plan your students will learn that human activities induced climate change in turn causes biodiversity disturbances and could be responsible for the increased risk of animal virus spillover into human populations.