WIND TURBINES CAUSE CHRONIC STRESS IN BADGERS (MELES MELES) IN GREAT BRITAIN

Abstract

There is a paucity of data with which to assess the effects of wind turbines noise on terrestrial wildlife, despite growing concern about the impact of infrasound from wind farms on human health and wellbeing. The study was undertaken to assess whether the presence of turbines impact the stress levels of badgers in nearby setts. This was achieved by using their hair cortisol level to determine if the badgers are physiological stressed. The results reveal that the hair of badgers living within 1 km of a wind farm have a 264% higher cortisol level than control badgers. This demonstrates that affected badgers suffer from enhanced hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal activity and thus are physiologically stressed. No differences were found between the cortisol levels of badgers living near wind farms operational since 2009 and 2012, indicating that the animals do not become habituated to turbine disturbance. Cortisol levels in the affected badgers did not vary in relation to the distance from turbines within 1km, wind farm annual power output or number of turbines. We propose that the rise in cortisol levels in affected badgers is caused by the turbines' sound. This could have detrimental impacts on the animals' immune system which could result in the increased risk of infection and disease and thus facilitating the spread of disease within the badger population.

The quantification of reproductive hormones in the hair of captive adult brown bears and their application as indicators of sex and reproductive state

“…In this regard, a considerable amount of research has been published in recent years focused on the measurement of steroid hormones, that include cortisol, testosterone, progesterone and estradiol, in hair samples collected from various wild mammals. Most of this research though has been directed toward using hair cortisol levels to assess the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal response over time to natural and human-caused stressors that include, but are not limited to, inter- and intra-specific resource competition (Bryan et al ., 2014a; Lafferty et al ., 2015), maternal fetal programming (Kapoor et al ., 2016; Meise et al ., 2016), hunting intensity (Bryan et al ., 2014b), contaminant exposure (Bechshøft et al ., 2015) and anthropogenic disturbance (Agnew et al ., 2016; Carlitz et al ., 2016), including climate change (Macbeth et al ., 2012; Mislan et al ., 2016). However, to date, little research has been directed toward evaluating concurrent concentrations of multiple steroid hormones (termed steroid hormone profiles) in hair for their potential value in augmenting non-invasive genetic sampling (Schwartz and Monfort, 2008).…”

Effect of competition and landscape characteristics on mesocarnivore cohabitation in badger setts

“…The possible consequences of such differences might further explain the cohabitation phenomenon. Nonetheless, our results highlight the problem of confrontation between humans and wildlife thru habitat destruction and unnatural landscape of fear (Agnew, Smith & Fowkes, 2016;Clinchy et al, 2016), which through increase of contact rate due to cohabitation of mesocarnivores with shared pathogens S€ uld et al, 2014;Laurimaa et al, 2016) might facilitate the spread of infectious diseases as a counterblow on humans.…”

Towards the validation of endogenous steroid testing in wildlife hair

“…Other studies have used hair cortisol to investigate the effects of social status (Koren & Geffen, 2009;Koren et al, 2006), social density (Dettmer, Novak, Meyer, & Suomi, 2014;Grigg, Nibblett, Robinson, & Smits, 2017;Salas et al, 2016), human disturbance (Agnew, Smith, & Fowkes, 2016;Bourbonnais, Nelson, Cattet, Darimont, & Stenhouse, 2013;Ewacha, Roth, Anderson, Brannen, & Dupont, 2017;Fourie et al, 2015;Lyons, Mastromonaco, Edwards, & Schulte-Hostedde, 2017), hunting (Bryan et al, 2015), diet (Bryan, Darimont, et al, 2013;Lafferty, Laudenslager, Mowat, Heard, & Belant, 2015), resource availability (Bryan et al, 2014), parasitism (Carlsson, Mastromonaco, Vandervalk, & Kutz, 2016), season (Di Francesco et al, 2017), and climate variability (Bechshøft et al, 2013;Fardi, Sauther F I G U R E 1 Procedure for analysis of steroid hormones in hair from wild and domestic animals. Typical steps include (1) initial hair prep (e.g., removal of follicles, sorting guard hairs from underfur), (2) washing (e.g., 1-3× with water and 1-3× with isopropanol), (3) cutting or grinding (optional), (4) weighing hair into a vial, (5) extraction of steroids from hair using a solvent (typically methanol), (6) separation of extract from hair matrix by centrifugation, and (7) analysis using EIA, RIA, or LC-MS/MS.…”