Felling trees and destroying the natural habitat have brought human beings and the animal world closer than ever. We can expect more diseases transmitted from animals to us. And much worse

Three seemingly unrelated events have caused havoc in recent weeks. Covid- 19 that surfaced sometime in February 2020 is the first. The second is the saga of swarms of desert locusts descending on vegetation in parts of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra. There are now media reports that swarms have been spotted in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu too. The third calamity has been the super cyclone Amphan that wrecked coastal Bengal and Kolkata, which was closely followed by Cyclone Nisarga that spared Mumbai but caused much damage to Raigad district.