Monitoring Chemical Environmental Hazards Through Wildlife Assessment: A Review Within the “One Health” Approach

Wildlife acts as a sentinel of environmental pollution, providing critical insights into potential risks to human health within the One Health framework. However, knowledge on the occurrence of legacy and emerging contaminants in wildlife, as well as their potential trophic transfer to humans, remains limited. Thus, monitoring contaminants in terrestrial wildlife, particularly in game species, is especially relevant, as game meat represents an important source of high-quality protein that must be safeguarded. This review summarizes current evidence on chemical contaminant levels in terrestrial wildlife from a “One Health” perspective. Despite the growing relevance of this approach, few studies have explicitly applied this term, and even fewer have focused on game meat, resulting in an incomplete picture of contamination. Although reported contaminants—metals, metalloids, pesticides, microplastics, and mycotoxins—originate from overlapping natural and anthropogenic sources, such as ammunition, agriculture, and industrial activities, a strong dependence on local environmental conditions continues to hamper cross-regional comparisons and the establishment of representative exposure levels. Overall, this review highlights the need for systematic monitoring of contaminants in terrestrial wildlife, with emphasis on emerging pollutants that are currently underrepresented in literature, to improve risk assessment, protect food safety, and better understand the impacts of environmental contamination on animal and human health.