Bird Group, Department of Life Sciences, The Natural History Museum, Tring, Hertfordshire HP23 6AP, United Kingdom.
Lord Howe Island Museum, P.O. Box 157, Lord Howe Island, New South Wales 2898, Australia.
Mar Pollut Bull. 2021 Jul;168:112428. doi: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2021.112428. Epub 2021 Apr 30.
Plastic production and pollution of the environment with plastic items is rising rapidly and outpacing current mitigation measures. Success of mitigation actions can only be determined if progress can be measured reliably through incorporation of specific, measurable targets. Here we evaluate temporal changes in the amount and composition of plastic in boluses from Flesh-footed Shearwaters during 2002-2020 and assess their suitability for measuring progress against national and international commitments to reduce plastic pollution. Plastic in the shearwater boluses showed a generally decreasing pattern from 2002 to 2015 and increasing again to 2020. The colour and type of plastics in boluses was comparable to items recovered from live and necropsied birds, but a much smaller sample size (~35 boluses/year) was required to detect changes in plastic number and mass over time. We therefore suggest shearwater boluses are a low-effort, high-statistical power monitoring tool for quantifying progress against environmental policies in Australia.
塑料的生产和塑料制品对环境的污染正在迅速增加，超过了当前的缓解措施。只有通过纳入具体、可衡量的目标，才能可靠地衡量缓解行动的进展，从而确定其成功。在这里，我们评估了 2002-2020 年期间 Flesh-footed Shearwaters 胃石中塑料的数量和组成的时间变化，并评估了它们在衡量国家和国际减少塑料污染承诺方面的进展方面的适用性。在 2002 年至 2015 年期间， shearwater 胃石中的塑料数量呈现出普遍减少的趋势，到 2020 年再次增加。胃石中的塑料颜色和类型与从活体和尸检鸟类中回收的物品相似，但为了检测随着时间的推移塑料数量和质量的变化，所需的样本量要小得多（每年约 35 个胃石）。因此，我们建议 shearwater 胃石是一种低投入、高统计能力的监测工具，可用于量化澳大利亚环境政策方面的进展。
