Química en el ambiente: Amenaza silenciosa para nuestra fauna
- Autores: Norberto Ruiz Suárez, María Camacho Rodríguez, María Almeida González, Luis D. Boada, Luis Alberto Henríquez Hernández, Manuel Zumbado Peña, Octavio Pérez Luzardo
- Localización: El Indiferente: Centro de Educación Ambiental Municipal, ISSN-e 1885-5172, Nº. 22, 2016 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Edición especial 20 aniversario), págs. 26-41
- Idioma: español
- Títulos paralelos:
- Chemichals in the environments: a real threat to our wildlife
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Resumen
It is well known that nowadays wildlife is threatened by multitude of factors, many of them being of anthropogenic origin.
Among them, a major cause of the decline of many wildlife species is the chemical contamination: the man-made chemicals, which are released into the environment and are distributed to the ecosystems. Although it has been described that background chemical contamination affects animals and humans around the world, we focus this article in some chemical products that are used as pesticides. Our research group, namely Grupo de Investigación en Medioambiente y Salud (GIMAS), has studied the incidence of pesticide poisoning in domestic animals and wildlife of the Canary Islands in the last decade, and our studies have confirmed that the use of pesticides is one of the major reasons for the reduction of animal populations observed in our archipelago. On one hand we are suffering the consequence of a common behavior inherited from our ancestors, based on the use of baits to eliminate species considered as harmful animals, and on the other hand, the massive and widespread use of anticoagulant rodenticides. Both groups of chemicals are frequently detected in our fauna, and the concentrations found very often surpass the toxicity thresholds. The education of the young generations appears as a necessary and useful tool to manage this problem and increase the survival of our species.
