As hunters stock up on ammunition for deer hunting season, conservationists are asking sportsmen to make the switch from lead to copper bullets to save bald eagles.
While rifle and shotgun ammunition is generally not purchased with the intention of killing eagles, it often does. Eagles are scavengers and will often pick at a hunter’s field dressings from a successful hunt. The leftovers can have fragments of the lead bullets, and it doesn’t take much to kill an eagle.
A piece of lead the size of a grain of rice could kill as many as four eagles, according to experts at the Wildlife Center of Virginia. The organization is in the midst of a record year for injured bald eagles, according to 2017 data from the Waynesboro-based center.
With deer hunting with most firearms starting Nov. 18 in James City and York counties, the risk of eagles being poisoned by lead bullets will increase substantially, according to Wildlife Center of Virginia founder Ed Clark, Jr.
“It’s been a bad year for eagles,” Clark said in September. “We’ve had a bunch of them come in early in the year that just couldn’t be saved.”
Tasked with rehabilitating injured bald eagles from locations throughout the state, the center has taken in 44 bald eagles so far in 2017, 38 bald eagles in 2016, 35 in 2015 and 38 in 2014.
Eagles scavenge hunters’ leftovers after a hunt. The leftovers often include parts of animals that have been shot with lead bullets — meaning that meat can contain lead fragments, according to the center’s Director of Veterinary Services, Ernesto Dominguez-Villegas.
“There’s a lot of other options for ammunition, so it’s really important for hunters to start switching from lead ammunition to other types of ammunition like copper,” Dominguez said.
The toxicity of lead is increased when consumed by wildlife — compared to lead shot lodging in muscle tissue — because of the exposure to digestive fluids and stomach acids which break the lead down. Lead is more easily absorbed into the bloodstream and disseminated throughout the animal’s entire body, according to a document from the Wildlife Center of Virginia.
Bald eagles have a significant intolerance to lead, Dominguez said, and the combination of fresh meat and lead is often a cocktail of death for the birds.
Bald eagles with measurable levels of lead in their bodies can “fly drunk,” several experts at the Wildlife Center of Virginia told WYDaily in January.
Lead can shut down the bird’s gastrointestinal tract, disrupt the nervous system, cause oxygen deprivation and disrupt the bird’s ability to see and fly.
So far this year, six eagles have died from lead poisoning at the center, while others have died from complications due to lead poisoning, according to Clark.
Sixty-eight percent of the eagles admitted to the Wildlife Center of Virginia in 2017 had measurable levels of lead in their blood — a 12 percentage point drop from 2016, Dominguez said.
While other birds can consume the metal with few side effects, as little as one part per million of lead in an eagle’s blood is lethal, according to the Wildlife Center of Virginia.
Clark, a long-time hunter and hunter-safety instructor with the National Rifle Association, said there are numerous ways hunters can reduce their impact on eagles and other wildlife by switching from lead-based bullets to tin, copper, or even steel bullets.
“It’s a huge problem, and having been a hunter my whole life I never heard anything about this,” Clark said.
Clark suggested hunters need to mindful of where and how they dispose of game and field dressings.
“Even after that bullet stops, it can continue to kill,” Clark said. “People don’t go into the woods to deer hunt with the idea they’re going to kill an eagle too, and yet it’s likely they will if they use lead-based ammunition.”
WYDaily archives were used in this article.
