Site-specific risk assessment for birds: critical issues in current risk assessment procedure

In landscapes influenced by intensive agriculture, the knowledge of the potential impact of pesticides on natural communities is important for protecting biodiversity. The Guidance Document on Risk assessment for birds and mammals and the current methods to perform ecotoxicological risk assessment take into account pesticide properties (application rates and patterns, physical-chemical properties) and bio-ecological characteristics of birds (weight, feeding rates, ecology and behaviour, role in the food chain). A site-specific approach is proposed to perform a refinement of the risk assessment at different scales, taking into account several critical issues related to the risk assessment procedure (availability of toxicological data, extrapolation of toxicity data, choice of focal species etc). A Gis-based risk assessment procedure was proposed to upscaling the approach. Detailed information on landscape and agriculture (land use, pesticide application, etc.) was available and the structure of the bird community was experimentally determined through field observations. In this study an application is presented and critical issues related to result are discussed.