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.