POTOMAC — Sometimes a shot can have impacts far beyond its intended target. Three eagles have died of lead poisoning so far this year after rescue attempts at Wild Skies Raptor Center.
The eagles were never in the cross-hairs, but bullets, aimed at ground squirrels, lead to their deaths. Experts said its part of a largely unknown problem.
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“They go out to get food for their nestlings and they don't come home,” said Rob Domenench, the founder and executive director of Raptor View Research Institute. “It is a big problem, but it's a simple problem to solve, in that all we have to do is change our behavior.”
Earlier this month, Wild Skies Raptor Center received a call about a sick adult bald eagle. Domenech picked him up and took him to the Potomac center, but it was too late. He had a lethal level of lead in his blood.
“This eagle in particular, he was already kind of so far gone, I should say,” said Brooke Tanner, Wild Skies Raptor Center’s founder and executive director. “There was just no fight left in him.”
Lead poisoning is all too familiar for Tanner and Domenench. Many cases come through Tanner’s rescue and rehabilitation center, spiking in the fall and again in the winter and spring.
The lead is coming from lead-core bullets used by hunters. In the fall, eagles, along with other raptors and scavengers, get into big game gut piles. In the winter and spring, when food can be harder to come by, they scavenge shot ground squirrels.
If either were taken with leaded bullets, it gets scooped up with the meat. Many of the shooters, experts said, have no idea their bullets could be poisoning eagles and others.
“It's springtime and it's sort of a pastime in the West,” Domenech said about shooting ground squirrels. “The sound of those 22’s shooting out across the field is like a dinner bell to these birds.”
Raptor View Research Institute has been studying this for 20 years. In the largest study of lead and golden eagles in North America, they found that nearly 60% of those captured in the fall had at least somewhat elevated level of lead.
In winter study of both bald and golden eagles with MPG Ranch, they found more than 90% of the eagles they sampled had above what is considered the background level of lead. Some a had enough levels to cause health impacts all throughout the body.
The raptor researchers said that there are changes people can make, like shooting lead-free bullets, that make a big difference for the birds and other scavengers.
“When it comes to small game hunting or varmint shooting, there are good alternatives that are lead-free,” said Mike McTee, a researcher at MPG Ranch who works with Raptor View and Wild Skies. “And for people that don't have a lead-free bullet for their small caliber, if they're shooting ground squirrels or prairie dogs, they could simply grab a shovel and a bucket, pick up the dead carcasses, bag them up and throw them in the trash so that they're not available to scavengers.”
A hunter, McTee himself made the switch. Years ago, it could be hard to find good quality lead-free alternatives, especially for smaller calibers used to hunt ground squirrels. Now, he said there are many options that are just as effective as leaded bullets.
“In fact, I hunted with lead bullets really close to where Raptor View Research was catching eagles that would later be found to have high levels of lead,” he said. “Fast forward to now, there's so many alternatives, and once I switched, it just seemed like a no-brainer.”
The researchers and rescuers have published and presented their findings to other scientists and hunters over the years. They said that many people have switched over to lead-free bullets, but still many others have never heard of the potential impacts their shots could have.
“I would like to, in my career, not have to recover and go out and pick up grounded eagles every year,” Domenech said. “Someday, before it's all over for me after 20 years.”
For hunters interested in learning more about lead-free options, they recommended checking out Sporting Lead Free’s website.
“Every year we get in more birds, more rescues. One of our big things is education, because who else is gonna tell these bird stories, like we're the one that gets to see it every day,” Tanner said. “And, if we don't tell people about it, then how are they gonna know?”
