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Pesticide poisoning poses a continuing threat to wildlife, particularly avian species such as the Indian Peafowl Pavo cristatus, which holds ecological and cultural significance in India. Despite increasing reports of mass mortalities of the National bird across the country, confirmed and reported, cases of pesticide poisoning remain limited. In this study, eight mass mortality incidents involving death of 121 Indian Peafowls were investigated in Tamil Nadu between 2019 and 2021. Five separate tissue samples from each of 41 individuals were analysed for the presence of 45 pesticides using Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). In all cases, monocrotophos a highly toxic organophosphate pesticide was consistently detected in both tissue and bait samples at concentrations far exceeding known avian toxicity thresholds, indicating it as the cause of mortality. Concentration pattern was in the order; crop content (339.0 mg/Kg) > gut content (83.5 mg/Kg) > liver (1.59 mg/Kg) > kidney (1.00 mg/Kg) > muscle (0.45 mg/Kg). High concentration of monocrotophos were highest in crop and gut contents, suggesting oral ingestion through baited food grains recently. Additionally, flubendiamide, profenophos and carbendazim were also detected in one incident each, representing the first report of these pesticide residues in wild birds globally. These findings provide definitive toxicological evidence of pesticide-induced mortality in Indian Peafowls, reinforcing earlier suspicions from news and field reports. The study highlights the widespread possible misuse of the regulated pesticide and the urgent need for coordinated monitoring, stricter regulation, and community-level awareness to mitigate poisoning risks to non-target wildlife species in the country.
Agger et al. (Wed,) studied this question.