Ranking Terrestrial Vertebrate Species for Utility in Biomonitoring and Vulnerability to Environmental Contaminants

Abstract

It has long been recognized that biota can be good indicators of environmental health and pollution. From the ancient Greek maxim “a bad crow lays a bad egg” to the coal miners’ caged canary as a sentinel of noxious gas, the link between contaminants in the environment and their effect on its inhabitants has been acknowledged. However, as the severity of man’s impact on the environment worsened, it became clear that more sophisticated efforts were needed to systematically monitor the extent and effects of this input. In the modern era, widespread recognition of the effects of contaminants upon wildlife can be traced back to the beginning of the twentieth century, as oil spills resulting from the oceanic transport of large quantities of crude oil claimed the lives of seabirds and other marine species (Albers 1995). In the early 1950s, anthropogenic contaminants were first linked to population-level effects, as ingestion of spent lead shot from hunting was found to be a contributing factor in annual declines in North American waterfowl populations (Bellrose 1959; Sanderson and Bellrose 1986). Although isolated efforts to monitor lead shot ingestion in waterfowl began during this time, it was not until the realization of the devastating effects of DDT on avian reproduction (most notably the bald eagle, Haliaeetus leucocephalus) that large-scale monitoring efforts were undertaken by government natural resource management agencies.