Terrestrial wildlife exposed to agrochemicals: An ecological risk assessment perspective

Ecological risk assessment of wildlife exposed to agrochemicals addresses hazard and exposure to at least qualify and attempt to quantify the ecological risk. To accomplish a present‐day ecological risk assessment in wildlife toxicology, data must be available from several disciplines: annlytical toxicology/environmental chemistry, biochemical toxicology, and wildlife ecology/ecotoxicology. This interdisciplinary approach, essential in wildlife toxicology for the assessment of the chemical effects on the reproduction, health, and well‐being of wildlife, makes it difficult to rapidly generate the data necessary for ecological risk assessments. However, as the field has evoloed, it has become clear that interdisciplinary cooperation is critical to provide the complex data sets required for the registration and reregistration of pesticide products by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The science of ecological risk assessment for terrestrial wildlife exposed to agrochemicals advanced rapidly during the decade of the 1980s and into the 1990s. The ecological risk assessment process will continue to improve as a result of improved data sets available for conduct of such assessments. Addressing the ecological risks associated with the use of an agricultural chemical involves a complex array of laboratory and field studies, in essence, a research program.