Quantitative selection of focal birds and mammals in higher‐tier risk assessment: An application to rice cultivations

Abstract

European Pesticide Registration requires a risk assessment (RA) for nontarget organisms according to EU Regulation. European Authorities have developed Guidance Documents (GDs) for RA considering exposure scenarios for the required organisms typical for terrestrial crops. The "Birds and Mammals EFSA GD" allows using multiple sources of information to extract information on species frequency needed in identifying focal species for higher-tier RA. We developed an analytical framework to calculate species frequency according to availability of species and habitat quantitative data. Since the exposure scenarios reported in the EFSA GD are inconsistent for rice, we tested the method on birds and mammals in a portion of the largest rice-cultivated area of Europe, the Italian Po floodplain. We derived three lists of focal species: (a) an expert-based list based on land-use data only, which can be useful for a preliminary exploration of potential candidate species; (b) a list derived from the interpolation of species data only, which reflects actual species frequency in rice fields; and (c) a list obtained by a species distribution model based on species monitoring and land-use data, which account for species selectivity for rice crops and are transferable to other contexts. Focal species were identified for crop-specific diet-foraging guilds, to build specific exposure scenarios to assess the risk from pesticides application in rice fields. The partial differences between our lists and those previously proposed highlight the need for identifying national lists, which can vary according to study area, biogeographic region and exposure scenarios. The application of the proposed method in European riceproducing countries should lead to crop-specific lists, which could then be integrated to obtain a flexible European list applicable to higher-tier RA. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2021;00:1-15.

Species Traits Drive Long-Term Population Trends of Common Breeding Birds in Northern Italy

“…We found a considerable increase of the population of the Northern Lapwing (+1653%), a result quite in contrast with the negative trend observed in Europe [ 6 ], especially in arable land [ 129 , 130 ], which is the type of habitat where the species mainly occurs in Lombardy. However, the first case of breeding of the Northern Lapwing in our study area is reported in 1960s, and from 1980s to the first decade of the twenty-first century the population has grown from a few hundreds of individuals to about two thousands of breeding pairs, probably supported by the water management of paddy fields, which represent the favorite breeding habitat for the species in Lombardy [ 131 , 132 , 133 ]. However, changes in agricultural practices for this kind of crops (in particular the delay of the flooding period) occurred in the last years, can negatively affect the reproductive success of the species, pointing out the importance to carry on specific demographic studies.…”