#lead bullets

long story short, i found my ela teacher’s civil war possibly real deal lead bullet on a windowsill while talking to @untilbirdsflytothesun. Who, with my also want, decided to keep it until i recently remembered that bulletes back then are lead and i dont need to get lead poisoning.

Golden eagles are one of the largest raptors in North America, and their numbers are declining due to an unlikely poison: lead ammunition left behind by game hunters. Eagles scavenge on animal remains contaminated by lead bullets, so conservationists are proposing a radical solution: getting hunters to go lead-free.

When hunters use lead ammunition, their bullets can fragment into hundreds of tiny pieces upon impact. These fragments are then left behind in gut pits that scavengers like golden eagles, California condors, and bald eagles feed on. Over time, the lead weakens their bones and interrupts nerve function, causing the eagles to lose coordination, become paralyzed, or eventually die.

Excerpt from this EcoWatch story:

America's national bird is threatened by hunters. Not that hunters are taking aim at the iconic bald eagle, but bald eagles are dying after eating lead bullets, as CNN reported.

The Cape Fear Raptor Center, North Carolina's largest eagle rehab facility, has recently treated seven eagles for lead poisoning, executive director Dr. Joni Shimp told CNN. The center also said that 80 percent of the eagles it has had to euthanize since November were because of lead poisoning.

Similarly, officials from the Hatteras Island Wildlife Rehabilitation in North Carolina said that 70 to 80 percent of the eagles they treat have high levels of lead in their system, and the effects are devastating, according to WTKR in North Carolina and coastal Virginia.

"The bird is lethargic, it's limp, it may have vision problems, staggering, legs not working correctly," explained Lou Browning of Hatteras Island Wildlife Rehabilitation to WTKR.

As CNN explained, hunters use lead bullets to kill deer and other animals. When the eagles feast upon the dead animals, they are indirectly exposed to toxic levels of lead.

"Hunters in no way, shape or form intentionally try to kill an eagle, vulture or any other species," Shimp said to CNN. "If the deer isn't killed immediately and runs and the hunter can't find the deer, the eagles and vultures find it and ingest the lead."

Shimp also explained some of the neurological problems that result from lead exposure to eagles. She told CNN that the eagles will show a "lack of judgment when flying across roadways, the inability to take flight quickly resulting in being hit by cars, seizures and death."

I don’t like the premise of this story, because I’m not a hunter. But, I can’t condemn those who hunt and eat their kill, because I eat meat. The article interests me because of the problem of lead in bullets taints wildlife generally, creating lead poisoning up and down the wildlife food chain. NRA opposes bans on lead ammunition, of course, under the guise that the ban is another one of those “first steps” toward taking away gun rights.

This article is telling us that the warnings and concerns expressed about lead bullets are having an effect: hunters are abandoning lead bullets.

Excerpt from this New York Times article:

At least 30 states regulate the use of lead ammunition, including Oregon, where Ms. Cassens and her father met for a weeklong elk hunt this fall. In Oregon, hunters are not allowed to fire lead bullets in a number of state wildlife areas. Neighboring California, which already enforces some of the nation’s most restrictive gun laws and was the first state to prohibit lead ammunition in specific regions, recently imposed a statewide ban on that type of bullet that will go into effect next July.

Across the country, state wildlife agencies have tried a range of tactics to encourage hunters to switch from lead ammunition. In Arizona, non-lead ammunition is free in some areas, and is delivered in bulk to a Native American tribe that lives near habitats with the most vulnerable scavenger species. In Minnesota, game wardens host shooting clinics for hunters to compare copper and lead bullets, hoping to show that lead bullets break apart in ways that make them more prone to contaminate the animals they kill.

According to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, lead exposure is the leading cause of death in California condors, the largest land birds in North America, which three decades ago were on the brink of extinction. And between 10 million and 20 million animals, including eagles, hawks, bears, vultures, ravens and coyotes, die each year not from being hunted, but from lead poisoning, according to the Humane Society.

Yet many hunters are reluctant to stop using lead bullets. They cite a range of reasons, from being unaware of the potential health threat or harm to scavenger animals, to having a stockpile of traditional ammunition they do not want to waste. Some also see the push away from lead bullets as a ruse for limiting gun rights or banning hunting more broadly. And many hunters question the availability, accuracy, price and lethality of non-lead ammunition.

Poisoned Wildlife and Tainted Meat: Why Hunters Are Moving Away From Lead Bullets | New York Times

Many hunters are ditching traditional ammunition amid mounting evidence that it harms scavengers and pollutes the food people eat.

Source: Poisoned Wildlife and Tainted Meat: Why Hunters Are Moving Away From Lead Bullets

You may not want to read the excerpt from the article, but you want to watch this short video (less than a minute). It sums up the issue of lead bullets perfectly:

Excerpt from the article:

For centuries, hunters have relied on lead ammunition to quickly and humanely kill game, but with each shot they release a potentially lethal poison into the environment, threatening vulnerable animal populations.

While harmless to humans, the gut piles and carcasses hunters regularly leave behind often contain lead fragments, which can be deadly for scavengers who eat them, particularly raptors like bald and golden eagles, California condors and turkey vultures.

Consequently, a seemingly unlikely alliance between sportspeople and environmental activists has formed to tackle the issue by advocating for copper and other non-lead options and promoting hunters as environmental stewards.

The Ventana Wildlife Acculturation is the only parlor that releases condors afterpiece into the wild in the Capacious Sur round in relation with California. With a record of releasing 50 birds thereon 1997, this group and others like it are slowly reintroducing this magnificent bird to its natural habitat.<\p>

The catch is that condors don't hunt their own prey. Instead, they scavenge. Frequently they get their meal from marine mammals which have ended awake on the shores. Other times they scavenge carcasses that proclaim been sinister by predators or the leftovers of human hunters - and human hunters use lead bullets.<\p>

Get the Precipitate Erroneous<\p>

The disconcertment with lead bullets is significant. Lead bullets cleave and scatter kithless as they pass through the musk-ox. Frequently, they end up disbursed finished the organs, and the emotiomotor piles socialistic posterior along by hunter are full as for lead. Complete of the birds which have been unbound in the Of marriageable age Sur corridor acquire had on be treated in place of tip poisoning at least already for that reason far.<\p>

Real coupled with a maxim passed in 2007 that prohibits the use of lead based ammunition within condor territory, compliance is iffy. The expostulate is convincing hunters who need always used lead ammunition that something undifferentiated copper or alloy desideratum do the same job just as snug, without endangering the birds quite consequently much.<\p>

Finding a Solution Everyone Can Mercurial With<\p>

Even though the condor unglue program has been prudently successful, lead isn't the only confound. Hunters continue to poach the birds, just as they did before they were ranked upon the endangered animal lists. With fines over $20,000, 5 years about probation and 200 hours on community activity called for with a violation, those caught find themselves within a lot more trouble than inner man imagined.<\p>

Since the condors being released on the North Coast can't travel far, there being no reliable or safe onrush path elsewhere, their habitat is limited. Accommodations decision need up be ready-prepared to the skies that those condors which are stamp in the furious can survive.<\p>