Provides a global assessment of a range of environmental stressors, including pesticides, environmental contaminants, and other emerging chemical threats, and their impact on wildlife populations. This book addresses these dangers and recommend proven mitigation techniques to protect and sustain Earth's wildlife populations.
Providing the latest information on the effects of environmental contaminants and biodiversity issues on wildlife, this comprehensive reference identifies and documents examples of chemical stressor exposure and response among ecosystem receptors worldwide. Experts in the field, contributors examine new findings on wildlife toxicology of munitions-related compounds, agriculture, and biofuels. Chapters address emerging diseases and expansion of pesticide/contaminant use, impacts on biodiversity, atmospheric contaminants and climate change, population modeling, and emerging transnational issues in ecotoxicology. Several case studies throughout the book emphasize emerging contaminant and biodiversity issues.
This work uses selected examples to highlight the complicated yet pertinent interactions between environmental contaminants and real-world global challenges. ? The chapter 'Global Perspectives on Wildlife Toxicology' is particularly impressive as it provides a snapshot of key issues, organized by geographical regions. The book will be of particular use to advanced readers who have a sound basis in environmental toxicology and seek to expand their knowledge into a broader, global framework. The key concepts covered in the book are essential in advancing an understanding of environmental quality and sustainability on an ever-changing planet. Summing Up: Highly recommended. -CHOICE, January 2011
Each of the chapters is a reasonable review of the topic at hand. I very much enjoyed the chapter on biodiversity and ecosystem function by Lacher and coauthors, which presents four interesting case studies of how contaminants have had effects at the population and ecosystem levels. From veterinary pharmaceuticals reducing ungulate-carrion-eating vultures in India to diclophenac and amphibian declines, from genetic and evolutionary changes in wildlife in Azerbaijan to agriculture and birds, these four case studies provide insight into events in parts of the world unfamiliar to many of us, places with less regulation of pesticides and toxic substances than we have here. Similarly, interesting insight is provided by the chapter on global perspectives, which presents information about contaminant threats to wildlife in different geographical regions, each region being covered by a different set of authors for a total of seventeen. It is frightening to learn about the excessive use of pesticides in developing countries that lack evironmental regulation.--Judith S. Weis, Rutgers University,New Jersey, in BioScience, February 2011