Department of Applied Biology, Miguel Hernández University, Avda. de la Universidad, s/n, E-03202 Elche, Spain.
Department of Zoology, University of Granada, Avda. de Fuente Nueva, s/n, 18071 Granada, Spain.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Jan 29;18(3):1201. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18031201.
Intentional poisoning is a global wildlife problem and an overlooked risk factor for public health. Managing poisoning requires unbiased and high-quality data through wildlife monitoring protocols, which are largely lacking. We herein evaluated the biases associated with current monitoring programmes of wildlife poisoning in Spain. We compared the national poisoning database for the 1990-2015 period with information obtained from a field experiment during which we used camera-traps to detect the species that consumed non-poisoned baits. Our findings suggest that the detection rate of poisoned animals is species-dependent: Several animal groups (e.g., domestic mammalian carnivores and vultures) tended to be over-represented in the poisoning national database, while others (e.g., corvids and small mammals) were underrepresented. As revealed by the GLMM analyses, the probability of a given species being overrepresented was higher for heaviest, aerial, and cryptic species. In conclusion, we found that monitoring poisoned fauna based on heterogeneous sources may produce important biases in detection rates; thus, such information should be used with caution by managers and policy-makers. Our findings may guide to future search efforts aimed to reach a more comprehensive understanding of the intentional wildlife poisoning problem.
蓄意中毒是全球性的野生动物问题，也是被忽视的公共健康风险因素。管理中毒需要通过野生动物监测协议获得公正和高质量的数据，但目前这种协议在很大程度上是缺乏的。本文评估了西班牙当前野生动物中毒监测计划中存在的偏见。我们将 1990-2015 年期间的国家中毒数据库与在野外实验中获得的信息进行了比较，在该实验中，我们使用相机陷阱来检测食用未中毒诱饵的物种。我们的研究结果表明，中毒动物的检出率取决于物种：一些动物群体（如家养的哺乳类食肉动物和秃鹫）在国家中毒数据库中过度代表，而其他群体（如鸦科和小型哺乳动物）则代表不足。GLMM 分析表明，给定物种过度代表的概率与其体重、飞行和隐匿性等特征有关。总之，我们发现基于异质来源监测中毒动物可能会导致检测率出现重要偏差；因此，管理者和决策者在使用此类信息时应谨慎。我们的研究结果可能为未来旨在更全面了解蓄意野生动物中毒问题的搜索工作提供指导。
