Gulls as potential sentinels for urban litter : combining nest and GPS-tracking information
Galimany, Eve (Institut de Ciències del Mar)
Navarro, Joan (Institut de Ciències del Mar)
Martino, Ilaria (Institut de Ciències del Mar)
Aymí, Raül (Institut Català d'Ornitologia)
Cermeño, Pablo (Fundació Barcelona Zoo)
Montalvo Porro, Tomas (Institut d'Investigació Biomèdica Sant Pau)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Data:	2023
Resum:	The production of urban waste has increased in the past decades leading to its mishandling. The effects on public health, economy, and wildlife that waste mismanagement can have are forcing governments to increase their efforts in detecting and mitigating the presence of waste. Identifying and monitoring sentinel species to assess the presence of urban litter could be a cost-effective option. Thus, analyzing the nest composition of yellow-legged gulls from an urban population inhabiting a very high populated city (Barcelona, Spain), and combining this information with accurate GPS tracking data, provides a potential tool to monitor the presence of marine and terrestrial litter over time. The results revealed the highest presence of debris in the nests of a seabird ever recorded. All the nests examined contained anthropogenic waste, with plastic items present in all of them. Crossing the nest composition with GPS tracking movements confirmed that the waste to build the nests was collected in the urban area and not in other environments surrounding the city. Then, the nest waste composition may be a good indicator of waste mismanagement and advise the municipalities to improve waste management and recycling strategies for the different types of litter. Using gulls breeding in cities as sentinel species and, in particular, the study of their nest composition, may provide essential data to decision-making stakeholders to adopt a One Health approach and help improve not only the environment's health but also the health of those who live in it.
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Matèria:	Coastal city ; One health ; Plastic ; Sentinel species ; Urban ecology ; Waste management
Publicat a:	Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, Vol. 195 Núm. 4 (april 2023) , p. 521, ISSN 1573-2959

DOI: 10.1007/s10661-023-11133-9
PMID: 36988754

9 p, 953.5 KB

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