Utah birds injured, dying from lead-poisoning


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SALT LAKE CITY — In the last several months, Utah bird rescuers have treated a number of eagles, and even some owls, that have died of lead-poisoning. It's the same problem that has caused many deaths of the rare giant condors. Some are calling for changes in hunting and shooting regulations.

The people who care for injured and sick birds say they don't know if lead poisoining is getting worse or if people are just more aware of it and bringing in the birds. But they say it's definitely happening; birds dying from lead, not by getting shot but by eating it.

At the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah, they've had four eagles die in recent months; three with confirmed lead-poisoning.

"For me personally it's absolutely heart-wrenching," said DaLyn Erickson Marthaler, Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah. "You have an animal that's strong and majestic and proud and fierce and you watch them struggling to stand and thrashing around and trying to stand up and hold its head up, is pretty hard to see."

One great horned owl couldn't blink its left eye, so they sewed its eye shut to protect it.

"And we can't find anything wrong with the muscles or anything around there," said Buz Marthaler of the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah. "So lead is one of the indicators that we're looking for."

They believe eagles, owls, and the more publicized giant condors, eat bullet-fragments and lead shot by scavenging on dead animals or gut-piles left behind by hunters and varmint shooters. It's well-documented in condors because they're monitored much more closely than owls and eagles.

"We've had a lot of animals die in the past that we're now looking at and thinking, wow, we should have done tests on them because it probably was lead," Marthaler said.

A top state game-bird official agrees lead is a serious threat to condors, but perhaps not so serious with eagles and owls.

"It's of concern," said Jim Parrish from the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. "We've had reports of birds being exposed. The sources of exposure and so forth, we don't really know for sure. But it is a concern."

He said hunters voluntarily started using copper bullets in condor areas of Southern Utah, but he opposes regulation because non-lead ammo costs hunters more money.

"We've got good support from them," Parrish said. "And I think if we tried to force something different right now, we would lose some of that support if maybe not all of it."

Bird rescuers worry it could be a survival threat to bald eagles.

"It will become that way, I believe, if we don't change," Marthaler said.

The problem has captured enough attention that further studies are underway, trying to document the scope of the problem.

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John Hollenhorst

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