Abstract
Many cases of wildlife poisoning in Europe have been reported causing population declines, especially in raptors. Toxicovigilance and risk assessment studies are essential to reinforce the knowledge of the number of illegal poisoning cases and the substances involved in these crimes. Many researchers and projects in different institutions have suggested the creation of a network to improve communication and share information between European countries. This article presents the results of the Short-Term Scientific Mission titled “Developing a Network of Analytical Labs and Government Institutions” supported by the COST Action European Raptor Biomonitoring Facility (CA16224), which aims to initiate a network of veterinary forensic toxicology laboratories, in order to improve communication among laboratories to prevent wildlife poisoning, especially in raptors. For this purpose, a questionnaire was designed and sent by email to 119 laboratories in Europe. It contained 39 questions on different topics (e.g. laboratory activities, analytical information). A total of 29 responses were received. Most participant laboratories work on veterinary forensic toxicology research and external cases at the same time, which provides a robust overview of the actual situation in the field. Analytical techniques and data collection methods should be harmonised, and communication between laboratories is encouraged to create a more effective network. The present study established contact between laboratories as an initial step to create a European network and compiled basic data to identify strengths and weaknesses that will help harmonise methodologies across Europe and increase pan-European capacities.
Highlights
In Europe, the use of poisons to kill wildlife and domestic animals is strictly prohibited by various regulations and directives (e.g. Directive 92/43 1992; Directive, 2009/147/EC 2010)
The list created by the EURAPMON questionnaire was used (Gómez-Ramírez et al, 2014), during the Working Group 2 Workshop on risk assessment of anticoagulant rodenticides in European raptors, held in Madrid in April 2019 (23 participants from 12 countries Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, the UK), and in the Working Groups 1 and 2 meeting on poisoning of raptors in Europe held in Bucharest in November 2019 (19 participants from 11 countries), participants provided additional contacts to the list
9 (31%) laboratories answered “No” to the first question indicating that they do not work on veterinary forensic toxicology, while 14 (48%) laboratories completed the entire questionnaire and 6 (21%) sent partially completed questionnaires
Summary
In Europe, the use of poisons to kill wildlife and domestic animals is strictly prohibited by various regulations and directives (e.g. Directive 92/43 1992; Directive, 2009/147/EC 2010). Many cases of illegal animal poisoning have been reported in Europe (Guitart et al, 2010; Hernández & Margalida, 2008; Ntemiri et al, 2018; Parvanov et al, 2018). Animal poisoning may occur due to different causes: (i) misuse of a registered chemical product or pesticide, (ii) abuse or illegal poisoning, when a chemical product, authorized or not, is used intentionally to kill animals using baits, (iii) as a result of a secondary poisoning (i.e. an animal scavenges or predates another animal already poisoned), or (iv) as an incidental case with a substance with an approved use (Berny, 2007; Hunter et al, 2005; Krone et al, 2017; Lambert et al, 2007). Red kites (Milvus milvus) in Spain are a good example of such a situation (Mateo-Tomás et al, 2020)
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