Departamento de Ecología Evolutiva, Museo de Ciencias Naturales (CSIC), Madrid, Spain.
PLoS One. 2010 Nov 30;5(11):e14163. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0014163.
There is increasing concern about the impact of veterinary drugs and livestock pathogens as factors damaging wildlife health, especially of threatened avian scavengers feeding upon medicated livestock carcasses. We conducted a comprehensive study of failed eggs and dead nestlings in bearded vultures (Gypaetus barbatus) to attempt to elucidate the proximate causes of breeding failure behind the recent decline in productivity in the Spanish Pyrenees. We found high concentrations of multiple veterinary drugs, primarily fluoroquinolones, in most failed eggs and nestlings, associated with multiple internal organ damage and livestock pathogens causing disease, especially septicaemia by swine pathogens and infectious bursal disease. The combined impact of drugs and disease as stochastic factors may result in potentially devastating effects exacerbating an already high risk of extinction and should be considered in current conservation programs for bearded vultures and other scavenger species, especially in regards to dangerous veterinary drugs and highly pathogenic poultry viruses.
人们越来越关注兽医药物和牲畜病原体对野生动物健康的影响，尤其是在威胁性的食腐鸟类以接受药物治疗的牲畜尸体为食的情况下。我们对髯鹫（Gypaetus barbatus）的失败卵和死亡雏鸟进行了全面研究，试图阐明西班牙比利牛斯山脉最近生产力下降背后导致繁殖失败的直接原因。我们发现，大多数失败的卵和雏鸟中都含有高浓度的多种兽医药物，主要是氟喹诺酮类药物，这些药物与多种内部器官损伤和导致疾病的牲畜病原体有关，尤其是由猪病原体引起的败血病和传染性法氏囊病。药物和疾病作为随机因素的综合影响可能会产生潜在的破坏性影响，加剧已经很高的灭绝风险，因此应该在髯鹫和其他食腐动物的保护计划中考虑到这一点，特别是在涉及危险的兽医药物和高致病性家禽病毒时。
