Pioneering golden eagle found poisoned in Yellowstone
As bird is found with large amounts of lead in its body, a biologist asks ‘Is
Yellowstone as protected as we once thought?’
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Christine Peterson in Newcastle, Wyoming
Tue 16 Apr 2019 06.00 EDTLast modified on Tue 16 Apr 2019 07.42 EDT
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Wildlife biologist David Haines holds the first-ever tagged golden eagle in
Yellowstone National Park. The eagle was tagged in August and turned up dead
from lead poisoning in early December.Photograph: Courtesy the National Park
Service
The pioneering golden eagle took to the skies above Yellowstone national park
in the fall and flew north, to areas where humans were hunting game. A few
months later it returned to the park and was found on the ground, dead.
Scientists performing a necropsy on the creature, the first to be tagged with a
radio transmitter in the park, made an unhappy discovery: it had been poisoned
by lead. They are now raising concerns over whether US national parks are as
safe for wildlife as they seem.
“This bird had a substantial amount of lead put into its system in a very quick
way,” said Todd Katzner, a research wildlife biologist with the US Geological
Survey. “You don’t get that from breathing lead. It ingested something.”
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Pioneering golden eagle found poisoned in Yellowstone
As bird is found with large amounts of lead in its body, a biologist asks ‘Is
Yellowstone as protected as we onc...
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The bird probably ingested lead ammunition fragments from big game carcasses.
Lead bullets have been a source of controversy in the US hunting community for
years. Conservationists argue for the use of alternatives such as copper
bullets. Shooting sports advocates say non-lead ammunition is costly and that
lead has been used for hundreds of years.
The topic has also become a flash point in national politics. In early 2017,
the day before former president Barak Obama left office, his administration
signed an order phasing out the use of lead ammunition and fishing tackle on
most federal lands managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The ban was
overturned less than two months later by the former interior secretary Ryan
Zinke.
It is the third time an eagle trapped for research in the northern Yellowstone
region has died of lead poisoning in the last eight years.
“We know that lead poisoning is a substantial threat to scavenging birds of
prey globally,” said Katzner, a research wildlife biologist with the US
Geological Survey. “And we now know the threat is extended to birds that are in
protected areas such as Yellowstone.”
Mark Oliva, public affairs manager for the National Shooting Sports Foundation,
said that in the face of windfarms and loss of habitat, lead ammunition is just
not that big of a threat. “Hunters can also bury gut piles if they are afraid
it will be a threat to the environment,” he said.
In Yellowstone, the golden eagle population is stable with large numbers
particularly in the northern regions of the park. But reproduction is
exceptionally poor, said Doug Smith, a senior wildlife biologist in Yellowstone.
In a first-of-its-kind study in the park, Smith and a graduate student in
Montana placed a radio transmitter on one golden eagle in August and five more
in early 2019 to figure out why.
Smith cannot say if lead poisoning from ammunition is an overall threat to
Yellowstone’s golden eagle population or the cause of low reproduction. The
study is still in its infancy. But he wanted the public to know a prized
species living in a protected area like Yellowstone could die from human
activity outside the park’s boundaries.
“Is Yellowstone as protected as we once thought?”
Katharina Bergdoll
watershed address: Newton's Pond>Beales Mill Run>Nomini Creek>Potomac
River>Chesapeake Bay>Atlantic Ocean
