Agricultural lands play a critical role in conserving biodiversity, since nearly half the land of the continental U.S. is farmed or ranched. Pesticides are one of the most important factors negatively affecting wildlife using these lands and living down-stream from them. Since the 1980s, Manomet has been studying the impact of pesticides on wildlife, focusing on subtle, sub-lethal effects, which are not addressed through current regulations. We have discovered compromised nervous system functions in a variety of wildlife species that feed in agricultural settings, some of which have experienced declines of up to 30% during the last 20 years. Through training, monitoring and habitat management, Manomet works to reduce toxic exposures in wildlife, which have been estimated in the U.S. alone at nearly 100 million birds each year.

Our goal:  Promote sustainable management of landscapes treated with pesticides that integrates societal and wildlife claims to land and water resources.  Our operational goal is to develop a collaborative approach to characterizing the significance of wildlife exposure to pesticides, specifically cholinesterase-inhibiting chemicals, and implementing habitat management strategies to mitigate adverse effects.

How do we operate?  Manomet is looking for ways to make farmland and downstream habitats of greater value to wildlife.  There is great potential to achieve meaningful improvements to habitat quality due to the power of farmers in terms land ownership and stewardship ethic. 

But the challenge, not only to wildlife but in some cases also to human health, is to control chemical inputs to farm habitats and surrounding resources.  Pesticide use in the U.S. is very high—about 25% of the pesticides produced globally.  Pesticides can interact with wildlife 1) through acute poisoning resulting in mortality events, 2) at lower doses resulting in sublethal effects, and 3) by altering habitat (removal of prey).  All of these effects are not well-documented and poorly understood.

What is our protection against these effects?  Industry studies required by government regulation focus on toxicity of chemicals in order to predict mortality, but not sublethal effects.  The scientific information developed to guide regulations comes strictly from laboratory studies--no field investigations are conducted.  Finally, there are approximately 70,000 chemicals registered with the EPA—20,000 of them pesticides.  The complex chemical nature of these products, how they interact with each other and in the vastly complex arena of the natural world can realistically never be known, much less predicted.

Since it is impossible to predict and prevent unacceptable effects, it is incumbent on regulators, scientists, and pesticide users to create a safety net to identify problems and adjust pesticide management as indicated.  Manomet’s Wildlife and Agriculture program has adopted the strategic objective of developing monitoring systems that create a safety net for wildlife and habitats in and near lands treated with pesticides. 

We are working with two constituencies—wildlife managers who are already charged with management and conservation of wildlife, and farming communities which represent the largest source of pesticides to the environment (75%).  Manomet’s WildNet Project facilitates a network of wildlife managers protecting some of the most important waterbird populations in North America, and our Farm Habitats Project develops Best Management Practices with collaborating farmers to reduce non-target effects on farms from Maryland to Massachusetts.

Who are our partners?  Manomet’s Wildlife and Agriculture Program works in collaboration with farmers, grower organizations, extension programs, federal and state agencies, chemical companies, wildlife managers, and the environmental community to develop stakeholder based solutions to habitat degradation due to pesticide applications. 

WildNet Project—working with wildlife managers in Florida, Georgia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Maine.  New sites and partners are in line to join WildNet at western sites in the US and Mexico. 

Farm Habitats Project—represents a rare opportunity to conduct management research on working farms.  Currently management solutions are being developed in southeastern Massachusetts at two cranberry farms, in central MA at two orchards, and on the eastern shore of Maryland at a large row crop farm on the Chester River.

Current projects

• WildNet Project - Click here to learn more about WildNet, Manomet’s broader role in waterbird conservation.

• Farm Habitats Project - Site under construction. Please check back later.

• Vernal Pools - Click here to learn more about our vernal pool and water quality study.

• Mid-Atlantic/New England/Maritimes (MANEM) Waterbird Conservation Plan - Please link to http://www.fws.gov/birds/waterbirds/MANEM/ for more information on this regional waterbird plan.

• Northest Coordinated Bird Monitoring (NECBM) project - The objectives of the waterbird (seabirds, marshbirds, colonial waterbirds) component are to:
• Develop a framework document that analyzes the needs and opportunities to further waterbird conservation in the region through monitoring
• Identify opportunities to integrate waterbird monitoring with other avian, habitat and wildlife monitoring efforts
• Promote strategic implementation of monitoring programs and pilot projects with our partners
Please link to http://www.nebirdmonitor.org/ for futher information.
• The Program for Regional and International Shorebird Monitoring (PRISM) - PRISM has been chosen as the model project for monitoring shorebirds within the NECBM. Manomet is coordinating shorebird monitoring in the Northeast for PRISM.
  Please link to http://www.shorebirdworld.org/fromthefield/PRISM/PRISM1.htm for more information on PRISM.

• Pesticides - The wildlife and human health connection. Click here to learn more about this new stakeholder project.

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WildNet

Animals in nature are increasingly confronted with chemical contaminants in their environment. The release of synthetic chemicals by industry, agriculture, and other activities has increased by 20% over the past two decades. Nearly 74,000 chemicals are in commercial use (GAO 2001). There is increasing evidence of acute and/or lethal exposure of wildlife to toxic chemicals in the environment (e.g. Grue et al. 1983, Mineau et al. 1999). Population level impacts have been documented in several species (Fox 2000). It has been estimated that 67 million wild birds are killed annually in the U.S. by legal pesticide use (Pimental et al. 1992).


Photo by Dave Twitchell

Although difficult to document, sublethal exposure of animals to chemicals is also of concern. For every animal killed by pesticides, a potentially much larger number may be sublethally poisoned. For example, cholinesterase inhibiting compounds, such as organophosphate and carbamate pesticides, exert their toxicity by inhibiting acetylcholinesterase (AChE), an important neurotransmitter involved in nerve transmission in animals. Loss of AChE activity can cause numerous physiological problems for non-target wildlife such as inability to thermoregulate (Grue et al. 1983, 1997). Reductions in reproductive success and survival may result when exposure is expressed through subtle changes such as loss of predator avoidance behaviors. Large-scale monitoring of wading birds in the northeast has revealed multiple pathologies linked to water quality loss across a range of urban, suburban and rural estuaries (Parsons 1994, Parsons et al. 2000, 2001).

Because anthropogenic contaminants have become ubiquitous in the environment and influence the ecology of wild species, wildlife managers and scientists are increasingly required to consider chemical disturbances as an essential component of habitat. Therefore to understand and protect wildlife populations, wildlife professionals must acquire skills and knowledge necessary to determine the exposure and effects of contaminants experienced by wildlife in their region of interest.

WildNet—Wildlife/Contaminants Monitoring Network is a cooperative project that seeks to facilitate ecotoxicological monitoring of wildlife. WildNet disseminates standardized methodological information and relevant scientific information to researchers and managers. The network, comprised of cooperating researchers and managers and coordinated by Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, contributes ecotoxicological information to an online database. The database provides a reference framework necessary for interpreting field data since toxicity data generated in preparation for registering chemicals by the EPA are typically available for a very small number of laboratory animals (e.g. mallard and quail). WildNet potentially facilitates broad-scale monitoring although initial efforts are focused on exposure and sublethal effects of anti-cholinesterase chemicals in birds and reptiles.

REFERENCES

Fox, G.A. 2000. Perturbations in terrestrial vertebrate populations: contaminants as a cause. Pp 19-60 in Environmental contaminants and terrestrial vertebrates: effects on populations, communities, and ecosystems (P.H. Albers, G. H. Heinz, and H. M. Ohlendorf, Eds.). SETAC, Pensacola, FL.

GAO. 2001. Chemical Risk Assessment. Report to congressional requesters, Washington, DC GAO-01-810.

Grue, C. E., W. J. Fleming, D. G. Busby, and E. F. Hill. 1983. Assessing hazards of organophosphate pesticides to wildlife. Trans. N. Am. Wildl. Nat. Res. Conf. 48: 200-220.

Grue, C. E., P. L. Gibert, and M. E. Seeley. 1997. Neurophysiological and behavioral changes in non-target wildlife exposed to organophosphate and carbamate pesticides: thermoregulation, food consumption, and reproduction. American Zoologist 37: 369-388.

Mineau, P., M. R. Fletcher, L. C. Glaser, N. J. Thomas, C. Brassard, L. K. Wilson, J. E. Elliott, L. Lyon, C. J. Henny, T. Bolinger, and S. L. Porter. 1999. Poisoning of raptors with organophosphorus and carbamate pesticides with emphasis on Canada, U.S., and U.K. Journal of Raptor Research 33: 1-37.

Parsons, K. C. 1994. The Arthur Kill oil spills: Biological effects in birds. Pp 215-237 in Before and After an Oil Spill (J. Burger, Ed.). Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ.

--------., A. C. Matz and S. R. Schmidt. 1988. Wading birds and cholinesterase-inhibiting insecticides: an examination of exposure and effects in free-living populations. Report submitted to Delaware DNREC, Dover, DE.

--------., S. R. Schmidt, and A. C. Matz. 2001. Regional patterns of wading bird productivity in northeastern U.S. estuaries. Waterbirds 24: 323-330.

--------., A.C. Matz, M.J. Hooper and M.A. Pokras. 2000. Monitoring wading bird exposure to agricultural chemicals using serum cholinesterase activity. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry 19(5): 1317-1323.

Pimental, D., U. Stachow, D. A. Takacs, H. W. Brubaker, A. R. Dumas, J. J. Meaney, J. A. S. O’neil, D. E. Onsi, and D. B. Cozilius. 1992. Conserving biological diversity in agricultural-forestry systems. Bioscience 42: 354-362.

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Low-level Exposure to Current-use Pesticides: Impacts on Wildlife and Human Health

Reducing Pesticide Exposures in Massachusetts Workshop Recommendations

Sublethal Effects of Exposure to Cholinesterase-inhibiting Pesticides: Human and Vertebrate Wildlife, a literature review.

Project Description:
Synthetic and toxic chemicals (of anthropogenic origin) are ubiquitous in the environment at generally low but measurable levels. Current pesticide regulations in the human and environmental health fields are designed to protect human and wildlife communities from large-dose exposures to pesticides and prevent acute disease symptoms and mortality. However, little protection is currently afforded to humans and wildlife to prevent low-level exposures and sublethal effects. In wildlife, scientists are producing a growing body of literature documenting subtle, adverse effects of low-level chemical exposure on sensitive physiological processes such as reproduction, development, cognition, and behavior. The ubiquity of pesticide use in rural and developed regions of Massachusetts for control of pests affecting agriculture, turf and ornamental plants, and in vector control potentially exposes a human constituency to risks associated with certain compounds and applications. Our project will investigate epidemiological parallels between wildlife and humans and increase communication between the wildlife health and human health stakeholders.

Constituency benefiting from this project:

1. Communities within agricultural landscapes (including important cranberry growing areas in southeastern Massachusetts and orchard operations in central and western areas of the state).
2. Communities where significant municipal and private pest control activities target turf pests on school playing fields, along roadways, on golf courses and in lawn care.
3. Communities at risk for West Nile Virus (transmitted principally by a container-breeding mosquito benefiting from the provision of habitat largely in urban settings) and other vector-borne diseases.

We seek to identify and reduce non-acute toxic exposures in humans and wildlife by investigating exposure to low-level concentrations of cholinesterase-inhibiting pesticides.

Objectives:

1. Characterize, from existing data and studies, the occurrence of low-level exposure to anti-cholinesterase chemicals in humans and wildlife, and investigate epidemiological parallels between humans and wildlife.
2. Develop recommendations to mitigate adverse effects through a stakeholder process and workshop.
3. Disseminate and/or provide access to the project products (characterization report, workshop, recommendations) to project partners and a broad stakeholder constituency.

For more information, contact Stephanie Schmidt (sschmidt@manomet.org), (508) 224-6521.

This project is funded in part by the Massachusetts Environmental Trust and The Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Institute.