OGDEN, Utah — A Utah wildlife rehab center is now asking for hunters to make a switch in ammunition from lead to copper following the death of an eagle in the Beehive State. "In the end, the loss of this beautiful individual was preventable," wrote the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah on their social media.
The rehabilitation center says that the bald eagle is their first of the year and that he died of lead poisoning stemming from the bullets of a hunting rifle. They made that determination following the use of a lead-testing machine.
"While the symptoms are similar to those when an Eagle contracts the West Nile Virus (WNV), the WNV is primarily a "summer disease" as the prime vector is the mosquito," the center stated.
According to the Wildlife Rehabilitiation Center of Northern Utah, lead poisoning in predators, like the bald eagle, happens each year soon after the start of rifle deer season and continues until March of each year. They say it's due to predators and scavengers eating from gut piles left following successful hunts.
"Lead ammunition fragments when it hits its target and is dispersed along a fairly wide path as the slug travels through," the center explained. "Fragments as small as the tip of a pencil are enough to kill an Eagle once ingested."
Their claims are backed up by the National Park Service who states that eagles, hawks, ravens, turkey vultures, and grizzly bears are all impacted by eating spent lead ammunition.
The National Park Service also claims that the threat of lead poisoning is one of the biggest threats facing the recovery of the California condor. "Semi-annual test results show that the majority of free-flying condors at Pinnacles National Park have blood lead levels that exceed 10 ug/dL (micrograms per deciliter), which is the same threshold used by the Center for Disease Control as an initial warning sign that a human child is at risk," the National Park Service stated.
And the risk doesn't stop at scavengers. In a published study, researchers randomly selected 324 packages of ground venison and whole cuts from game meat processors and found that 34% of them contained metal fragments.
But what can be done to protect both animals and humans? The Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah says one change is a shift from lead ammunition to copper. "Lead ammunition fragments when it hits its target and is dispersed along a fairly wide path as the slug travels through. Fragments as small as the tip of a pencil are enough to kill an Eagle once ingested," the center wrote.
The center says they understand that one argument against the shift in ammunition is regarding the cost however, they state that the loss of animals is a much larger loss in value. "After purchasing trucks, RVs, ATVs, guns, fuel, clothing, food, etc. what is the real disadvantage of the cost of a box of copper that makes it so "over the top"?"
