EUROPEAN RAPTOR BIOMONITORING FACILITY ERBFacility COST ACTION CA16224 Guy Duke1, Paola Movalliv2, René Dekker2, Friederike Woog★3 and Oliver Krone4 1 Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford – UK 2 Naturalis Biodiversity Center – PO Box 9517, 2300 CR Leiden, The Netherlands 3 State Museum of Natural History, Stuttgart – Germany 4 Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) - Germany V Corresponding author: paola.movalli@skynet.be ★ Background & Aims Environmental contaminants impose a multi-billion cost on human and wildlife health. The ERBFacility fills a key gap in wildlife biomonitoring by: seeking to reduce these costs meeting pan-European needs for more reliable risk assessment of compounds enhancing effectiveness evaluation of chemicals laws early warning of emerging contaminant problems addressing chemicals regulations relating to priority substances (REACH), plant protection products, biocides, veterinary products and heavy metals Using raptors as particularly appropriate sentinels for persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) compounds ERBFacility is timely and relevant given the shift in chemicals regulation from national to EU level and the call in the EU 7th Environmental Action Program for better scientific knowledge for a non-toxic environment. It complements recent European developments in human biomonitoring, notably the EU project HBM4EU. The Challenge Delivery of raptor biomonitoring requires research coordination & capacity building in three, inter-linked ‘arenas’ (addressed by Working Groups, WG 1 - 4) The Analysis Arena: there is substantial existing lab activity that could underpin the development of pan-European monitoring of environmental contaminants, but there is an absence of necessary networking and coordination among ecotoxicologists and analytical laboratories, decision-makers and regulatory agencies (WG1, WG2). The Collections Arena: Natural history collections and environmental specimen banks across Europe hold many thousands of relevant raptor samples, offering potential to determine contaminant trends over time & space. Realizing this potential requires networking & coordination among curators and ecotoxicologists (WG3) The Field Arena: while there is considerable activity for ecological research on and monitoring of raptor populations across Europe, this is not yet being harnessed for sampling of raptor tissues and of relevant field data – this requires networking and coordination among ornithologists, ecotoxicologists and collections’ curators. (WG4) WG1 Research coordination & capacity building in the ‘Analysis Arena’ (focus: REACH ‘priority contaminants’) WG2 Research coordination & capacity building in the ‘Analysis Arena’ (focus: plant protection products, biocides & non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) Research Coordination Objectives Assess current capacities for pan-European raptor biomonitoring & develop framework for a European Raptor Biomonitoring Scheme (ERBioMS) Develop framework for a distributed European Raptor Specimen Bank (ERSpeB) for contaminant monitoring Develop framework, standards & protocols for a European Raptor Sampling Programme (ERSamP) ERBFacility also has objectives to build relevant capacities in the analysis, collections and field ‘arenas’ (see below). WG4: Research coordination & capacity building in the ‘Field Arena’ WG3 Research coordination & capacity building in the ‘Collections Arena’ PARTICIPATE! Contact paola.movalli@skynet.be For more details Naturalis, photo: G. Duke Meta-database of samples Harmonized standards for analyses & sampling Best practice guidance for sampling Proof of concept for pan-European assessments Expected Outcomes “next generation biomonitoring” European Raptor Biomonitoring Scheme (ERBS) Distributed European Raptor Specimen Bank (ERSB) European Raptor Sampling Program (ERSP) COST guidelines & rules on participation: http://www.cost.eu/participate MORE INFORMATION ON ERBFacility including the MoU: http://www.cost.eu/COST_Actions/ca/CA16224 Peregrine chicks, The Netherlands (photo: J. Smeets)