Wildlife handling regulations and their effectiveness
There are no internationally consensual regulations for the installation of biologgers in wildlife. Consequently, it is challenging to delineate recommendations to minimize the risks associated with indiscriminate biologging and, at the same time, to get the maximum possible scientific knowledge from the data obtained.
To assess the situation on a global scale, we conducted a brief survey distributing it among our collaborators with expertise in biologging. We asked them: a) in which countries they installed biologgers; b) if in that country, there are regulations for the capture and handling of wildlife including biologgers installation (yes, no, do not know); in the case there are regulations, c) if they are effective in guaranteeing the welfare of the study animals (ineffective, improvable, excellent); d) if they effectively guarantee that the data obtained culminate in a scientific publication (ineffective, improvable, excellent). Finally, and to compare with the results obtained in our example of Iberian raptors tracking projects, we asked them in their opinion what proportion of the biologging projects they think do not produce scientific publications (<25%, 25-50%, 50-75%, >75%).
We received responses from 29 researchers from 30 countries. Most of these countries (N=27) have regulations for wildlife handling (Figure 2). Only three of the countries do not exit any regulation at all. Surprisingly, we received contradictory information from 3 countries. In these instances, some participants answered that there are regulations for their country, while others claimed the opposite for the same country. These contradictions can reflect how even the application of existing regulations can be variable and confusing or might depend on regional aspects, as occur in the Galapagos Islands, where it applies a much more restrictive regulation than the rest of Ecuador (pers. comm.). Only 10% of participants considered the current legislation to be adequate (Figure 2), which may indicate that, on a global scale, existing regulations designed to prevent adverse impacts for tagged individuals do not perform their tasks properly. In parallel, most researchers (75%) responded that they considered it completely ineffective in guaranteeing data publication (Figure 2) and suggested that regulations poorly evaluate the results of biologging projects. This lack of control is probably the main reason why we find such high rates of projects conducted with Iberian raptors that do not generate any publication (Figure 1). Finally, the general opinion of the researchers surveyed (53.6%) is that between 25% and 50% of biologging projects do not produce scientific publications (Figure 2). This result agrees with what we observed in the case of the Iberian raptors (see above and Figure 1) and reinforces our assumption that our study model represents accurately what happens on a global scale.