Originally published at: Lead ammunition is poisoning bald eagles | Boing Boing
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How can it be possible that 'Murica is plagued by internal contradictions?
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I have it on good authority that windmills kill more bald eagles every year than guns do… /s
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I know here it’s not legal to hunt migratory birds with lead ammunition, so it is possible to ban it (at least in Canada, the US is unhinged when it comes to their rooty-tooty-point-n-shooties). They really should ban lead in hunting ammunition generally, it’s awful we’re putting so much of that toxic metal into the environment so people can get their trophies and meat.
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Agreed, 100% ban in hunting ammunition makes sense. I would add that tommy gun ammunition should retain lead, though, for the sake of villains in Dick Tracy comics.
“Eat copper, copper” just doesn’t work.
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And that’s not even counting the ones who fly into solar panels.
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Thousands I hear…
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Tens of millions, but they cover up most of them.
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Such a tragedy, as there were millions upon millions of bald eagles, until Big Green Energy destroyed the landscape and obliterated these majestic creatures…
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They flew in flocks so large that they darkened the sky for days on end, but Big Solar poisoned them with lead because of the cost of cleaning off the panels.
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But we’ll never forget…
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So noble, so majestic.
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bald eagles get tangled more often than you might think.
Benjamin Franklin was correct… we should have had a turkey as our national bird…
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oh, that turkey gif perfectly captures the “spirit of 'murica”. also has me LoL’ing for several minutes now!
to the topic - didn’t California ban, or attempt to ban lead shot for hunting?
i seem to remember also, an effort to stop using lead sinkers for fishing in Washington state, but it has been many decades since i lived there. you got anything on that @DukeTrout ?
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Unsure, but it sounds like something they would have done…
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Yep. Looks like it went into effect in 2019: Nonlead Ammunition in California
Man, I remember “ok, slide the wire into this slot, then bite down on this chunk of lead”. Probably you don’t get much lead from that compared to the environmental contamination, but what a terrible idea.
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Who would have thought that lead in the environment would have a toxic effect like DDT did, which is one of the things that lead to bald eagles becoming endangered in the first place.
Now if there was only some way the people of Flint, MI, and other cities in the U.S. could get the lead out of their drinking water…
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That’s true and has been for decades.
The actual amount of lead from HUNTING bullets into the environment is minuscule. The problem, as the article pointed out, is specific scenario of gut piles which may have trace bits of lead in them being scavenged by eagles or other animals. (Mostly coyotes around here.)
Hunters who oppose giving up lead may do so because they’re loyal to their preferred ammunition, or because the cost of lead remains lower than non-toxic alternatives, such as copper.
That paradigm might be changing, as mono-metal bullet technology has really increased over the years, and they are producing bullets that are more uniformly shaped, meaning better accuracy, and with reliable expansion. They will continue to be more expensive that lead/copper bullets,but performance wise they may be the clear winner for some rounds.
CA has a ban on lead bullets and shot for all hunting. Several states have some additional limits beyond the federal waterfowl lead-free law. Most of them are lead-free shot for more than just water fowl birds. Some of them have restrictions based on location, such as state owned land and conservation areas.There are non-lead bullet restrictions at some (if not all) National Parks as well.
Fun fact - the local lake I grew up near never had Bald Eagles when I was a kid, but there are some in the area now. I saw two of them last year!
ETA:
I remember that! They looked like little pac mans with wings on the back.
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I may have worded that poorly, but the problem is that lead is concentrated in sources of food for other animals which causes them to be contaminated. So yes, the amount of total lead in the greater environment is not large, but the effects on the food environment for local wildlife are. The effects of using lead for hunting therefore have an outsized effect on the environment of living creatures.
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