The recent hantavirus outbreak has once again raised a question that scientists have been warning about for years: are zoonotic spillovers — the transmission of pathogens from animals to humans — becoming less of an exception and more of an inevitability? If Covid was the defining reminder of how devastating an animal-borne virus can become, hantavirus is the latest signal that the ecological conditions enabling such spillovers are a risk.

As forests are cleared, cities expand deeper into wildlife habitats, industrial farming intensifies, and climate change reshapes the movement of species and disease-carrying vectors, such outbreaks can become more frequent.…