Evaluating contamination in the Red-billed Chough Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax through non-invasive sampling Augusto De Sanctis a, ⁎, Michela Mariottini b , Emiliano L. Fanello b , Guillermo Blanco c , Silvano E. Focardi b , Cristiana Guerranti b , Guido Perra b a Abruzzo Institute of WWF Protected Areas, Nature Reserve “Sagittario Gorges”, Via D'Annunzio 68, 65100 Pescara, Italy b Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Siena, Siena, Italy c Department of Evolutionary Ecology, National Museum of Natural History, CSIC, Madrid, Spain abstract article info Article history: Received 30 November 2011 Received in revised form 29 August 2012 Accepted 30 August 2012 Available online xxxx Keywords: Red-billed Chough Biomonitoring Polybrominated diphenyl ethers Polychlorinated biphenyls Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons Hexachlorocyclohexane Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane Concentrations of 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), 19 polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), 7 polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), hexachlorobenzene (HCB), isomers and metabolites of dichloro- diphenyltrichloroethane (DDTs) and Hexachlorocyclohexane (HCHs) were measured in the feathers of the Red-billed Chough Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax, a rare and protected corvid species inhabiting rural and moun- tainous areas. Feathers were collected in the wild from seven sites in the Iberian Peninsula, one in La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain and one site in Italy. HCH isomers and HCB resulted always under the detection limit. PAHs were found only in the Italian population (range 39.3–54.6 ng/g wet weight in the three subsam- ples). For PBDEs, the concentrations ranged from 135 to 11,753 pg/g (mean 1560 ± 3415 pg/g w.w.). Only one sample collected in the most urbanized Spanish site in 1990 exceeded 2000 pg/g. Twenty years later in the same site the concentration resulted very low. Six Spanish areas from the same meta-population, and one island population at La Palma showed a low contamination by pp'DDE (3.2 ± 3.3 ng/g w.w., range for positive samples 1.7–10.1 ng/g w.w.). PCBs were found only in two Spanish locations with the 52 and the 138 congeners. Overall the species showed low to intermediate levels of contamination in feathers prob- ably due to its intermediate trophic position and/or to the integrity of its environment. © 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V. 1. Introduction The impacts of persistant toxic chemicals on wild animals are widely recognized, the consequences of exposure on animal health could be both acute and sublethal (reviewed by [1] for PAHs; by [2] for brominated flame retardants; by [3] for DDTs, HCB and HCS isomers). Birds have been recognized as suitable bioindicators of environmental health [4]. The Red-billed Chough Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax is a rare corvid species living mostly in rural and mountainous areas of Europe where has a scattered distribution, nesting from rocky coastal cliffs of west Ireland to high peaks of Pyrenees and the Alps, from Iberian sub-steppes to volcanic gorges of the Canary Islands. As a result, these fragmented populations could experience very different levels of contamination, and the study of the pollution is a prerequisite to address conservation efforts and also to scale the different conserva- tion options. For example, information about the levels of contamina- tion of persistent compound as DDT could be used to build specific extinction models for the different populations [5] to concentrate and to prioritize interventions on the most affected populations. This species is usually ecologically linked to low intensity agro- ecosystems [6]. In recent years some populations have undergone a severe decline possibly due to the abandonment or, on the opposite, intensification of farming activities promoting reduction of their feed- ing opportunities [6–8]. Besides its effects on prey availability, agri- cultural intensification can also expose birds to agrochemicals which is usually subtle due to the sublethal effect on the individuals [9]. Because of its synantropic nesting and roosting behavior, the Red-Billed Chough colonized several Spanish areas outside the former breeding range. They now breed and roosts on abandoned rural houses, historical buildings and other artefacts, and here could experience exposure to pollutant typically linked with industries, traffic and heating (anthropogenic activities). As a consequence, the evaluation of the degree of exposure to the different contaminants should be part of the planning process to bet- ter address conservation efforts for each chough meta-population. Until now, studies comparing contamination levels between coun- tries employed bird eggs, blood and/or other tissues with standard techniques but in some wild species it could be difficult to capture in- dividuals or to sample nests from each population. Although in Spain hundreds of choughs were ringed each year thanks to its synantropy, in Italy less than ten individuals were captured in the last decade. The Microchemical Journal xxx (2012) xxx–xxx ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +39 85 4510236. E-mail address: a.desanctis@wwf.it (A. De Sanctis). MICROC-01643; No of Pages 6 0026-265X/$ – see front matter © 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.microc.2012.08.017 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Microchemical Journal journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/microc Please cite this article as: A. De Sanctis, et al., Evaluating contamination in the Red-billed Chough Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax through non- invasive sampling, Microchem. J. (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.microc.2012.08.017