Bald Eagles Are Dying of Lead Poisoning, and Hunters Are to Blame [View all]

[Little Star]

It’s illegal to shoot bald eagles but America’s national symbol is still dying as a result of hunting.

Researchers working at the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge recently conducted autopsies on 168 dead bald eagles found in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. According to their tests, nearly half the birds had detectable levels of lead in their livers. Worse, 21 percent of the eagles most likely died from exposure to the toxic metal.

The source of this lead, according to the study, appears to be the gut piles left behind by hunters after they have shot deer and other animals. Lead bullets tend to fragment into tiny pieces when they strike a target and can spread through an entire carcass. The researchers collected the offal piles from 25 deer that had been shot with lead ammunition on the refuge. Radiograph tests showed that 36 percent of those gut piles contained lead, sometimes as little as one fragment and as many as 107 fragments.
http://news.yahoo.com/bald-eagles-dying-lead-poisoning-hunters-blame-180608297.html

Awful!