AI Article Synopsis
- Wildlife managers have focused on recovering Great Lakes ecosystems from Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) since the 1970s, but monitoring progress is complicated by various contaminants and a lack of biological benchmarks.
- The Wildlife Environmental Quality Index (WEQI) is introduced as a tool to measure wildlife exposure to harmful contaminant levels, using Herring Gull egg data to assess trends in pollution over time.
- Overall, the environmental quality in the Great Lakes improved by 18% from 2002 to 2017, but recovery rates varied significantly among lakes, highlighting the need for tailored management strategies to address specific lake conditions and contamination profiles.
Article Abstract
Since the 1970s, wildlife managers have prioritized the recovery of Great Lakes ecosystems from contamination by Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). Monitoring and quantifying the region's recovery is challenged by the diversity of legacy contaminants in the environment and the lack of benchmarks for their potential biological effects. We address this gap by introducing the Wildlife Environmental Quality Index (WEQI) based on prior water and sediment quality indices. The tool summarizes, in a single score, the exposure of wildlife to harmful levels of multiple contaminants - with harmful levels set by published guidelines for protecting piscivorous wildlife from biological impacts. We applied the new index to a combined Canadian and American dataset of Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) egg data to elucidate trends in wildlife for eight legacy industrial pollutants and insecticides in the Great Lakes. Environmental quality of the Great Lakes region (as indexed by WEQI) improved by 18% between 2002 and 2017. Improvement came from reductions in both the scope of contamination (the number of guideline-exceeding contaminants) and its amplitude (the average size of guideline exceedances) at bird colonies. But recovery was unequal among lakes, with Lake Erie showing no improvement at one extreme. Weakly- or non-recovering lakes (Erie, Ontario, Huron) were marked by inconsistent improvement in scope and amplitude, likely due to ongoing loading, sediment resuspension and other stressors reported elsewhere. Fast-recovering lakes (Superior and Michigan), meanwhile, improved in both scope and amplitude. Contrasting trends and contaminant profiles (e.g., exceedances of PCBs versus DDTs) highlight the importance of lake-specific management for equalizing recoveries. Lower environmental quality at American than Canadian colonies, particularly in Lake Huron, further suggest uneven success in - and opportunities for - the binational management of wildlife exposure to legacy contaminants.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2023.123119 | DOI Listing |
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