Tracking pan-continental trends in environmental contamination using sentinel raptors—what types of samples should we use?
Ecotoxicology
Tracking pan-continental trends in environmental contamination using sentinel raptors-what types of samples should we use?
S. Esp´ın 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
A. J. Garc´ıa-Ferna´ndez 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
D. Herzke 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
R. F. Shore 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
B. van Hattum 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
E. Mart´ınez-Lo´pez 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
M. Coeurdassier 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
I. Eulaers 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
C. Fritsch 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
P. Go´mez-Ram´ırez 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
V. L. B. Jaspers 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
O. Krone 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
G. Duke 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
B. Helander 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
R. Mateo 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
P. Movalli 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
C. Sonne 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
N. W. van den Brink 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
0 FRAM-High North Research Centre for Climate and the Environment, Norwegian Institute for Air Research , 9296 Tromsø , Norway
1 Section of Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Turku , 20014 Turku , Finland
2 Department of Toxicology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Murcia, Campus de Espinardo , 30100 Murcia , Spain
3 Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research , Alfred- Kowalke-Strasse 17, 10315 Berlin , Germany
4 Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology , EU2-169, Høgskoleringen 5, 7491 Trondheim , Norway
5 Behavioural Ecology and Ecophysiology Group, Department of Biology, University of Antwerp, Universiteitsplein 1 , 2610 Wilrijk , Belgium
6 Chrono-Environnement, UMR 6249 University Bourgogne Franche-Comte ́/CNRS Usc INRA , 16 Route de Gray, 25030 Besanc ̧on Cedex , France
7 Institute for Environmental Studies, VU University , De Boelelaan 1087, 1081 HV Amsterdam , The Netherlands
8 NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Lancaster Environment Centre , Library Avenue, Bailrigg, Lancaster LA1 4AP , UK
Biomonitoring using birds of prey as sentinel species has been mooted as a way to evaluate the success of European Union directives that are designed to protect people and the environment across Europe from industrial contaminants and pesticides. No such pan-European evaluation currently exists. Coordination of such large scale monitoring would require harmonisation across multiple countries of the types of samples collected and analysedmatrices vary in the ease with which they can be collected and the information they provide. We report the first ever pan-European assessment of which raptor samples are collected across Europe and review their suitability for biomonitoring. Currently, some 182 monitoring programmes across 33 European countries collect a variety of raptor samples, and we discuss the relative merits of each for monitoring current priority and emerging compounds. Of the matrices collected, blood and liver are used most extensively for quantifying trends in recent and longerterm contaminant exposure, respectively. These matrices are potentially the most effective for pan-European biomonitoring but are not so widely and frequently
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10 Centre for the Environment, Oxford University
Environmental Change Institute, South Parks Road,
Oxford OX1 3QY, UK
11 Environmental Research & Monitoring, Swedish Museum of
Natural History, Box 50007, SE-104 05 Stockholm, Sweden
12 Instituto de Investigacio´n en Recursos Cinege´ticos-IREC
(CSIC-UCLM-JCCM), Ronda de Toledo s/n,
13071 Ciudad Real, Spain
13 Department of Collections, Naturalis Biodiversity Center,
Darwinweg 2, 2333 CR Leiden, The Netherlands
14 Department of Bioscience, Artic Research Centre (ARC),
A˚ rhus University, Frederiksborgvej 399, PO Box 358,
4000 Roskilde, Denmark
15 Division of Toxicology, Wageningen University,
PO Box 8000, NL-6700EA Wageningen, The Netherlands
16 Deltares, Marine and Coastal Systems, P.O. Box 177,
2600 MH Delft, The Netherlands
collected as others. We found that failed eggs and feathers
are the most widely collected samples. Because of this
ubiquity, they may provide the best opportunities for
widescale biomonitoring, although neither is suitable for all
compounds. We advocate piloting pan-European
monitoring of selected priority compounds using these matrices
and developing read-across approaches to accommodate
any effects that trophic pathway and species differences in
accumulation may have on our ability to track
environmental trends in contaminants.
Bird of prey
Matrix
Introduction
Contaminant
Monitoring
Raptors (birds of prey and owls) were among the first
wildlife species known to be affected by anthropogenic
pollutants. Pesticide and/or contaminant related declines in
peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus), bald eagle (Haliaeetus
leucocephalus), white-tailed sea eagle (Haliaeetus
albicilla) and sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) populations have
been widely documented in Europe and North America in
the 20th Century
(Hickey 1969; Ratcliffe 1980; Nisbet
1989; Newton and Wyllie 1992; Rutz et al. 2006; Sielicki
and Mizera 2009)
. These were largely caused by primary
and/or secondary exposure to organochlorine pesticides
(OCPs), such as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroeth (...truncated)