Wildlife Damage Management, Internet Center for
Date of this Version
November 1976
Abstract
The registration and reregistration process for vertebrate pesticides is difficult at best and is becoming more complicated and time consuming each year, particularly for bird-damage control chemicals. Although much of the information that is required for U.S. registrations (such as toxicology, general chemistry, and analytical methodology) is beyond our purview at this seminar, there are some areas where research and management personnel can have a favorable impact on present and future requirements of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). I am speaking in particular of the methodology used to determine the laboratory and field efficacy of bird damage control chemicals. Because bird damage control is a rather new science, and still in a formative stage, there is very little available in the literature or in unpublished reports that details suitable methodology for appraising efficacy under relatively standardized conditions. Although EPA and trade organizations have developed a number of protocols to evaluate the efficacy of rodenticides, few exist specifically for bird control agents. This situation is both beneficial and detrimental. It is beneficial in that there is much room for the development of solid and objective protocols by individuals in private and public organizations. Because there are few previous standards to rebut or invalidate, new protocols should meet with some degree of immediate acceptance if based on sound principles. The existing situation also has many drawbacks, however, because without previous test protocols to relate to, the burden of proof as to the adequacy of a test protocol falls on the person(s) developing the protocol. The way is obviously not open to the indiscriminate development of untested or unreliable protocols but only to those solidly based on fact and which result iin objective appraisals.