Why is lead used at all? Why not steel?
This is not exclusively an American problem. Eagles in the Italian alps are dying mostly of lead poisoning, too.
Gonna guess it’s due to left over fragments from WW1?
No, it’s due to these birds eating other human-hunted animals, either alive or their abandoned interiora.
Are folks killing animals and not eating them or butchering them for their materials? That’s fucken horrid if so.
My guess is that migratory waterfowl eat lead shot when ‘grazing’ the bottom of wetlands. This bio-concentrates the lead in eagles when they prey on ducks and such.
Aight I see how that’d happen. Forgot about the reservoir effect.
The side effects of such widespread gun usage in the US are a bummer, but at least that proliferation of guns protected your country from being overrun by a tyrannical facist government.
It’s amazing how well their gun culture stopped the tyrannical dictatorship from teaching taking over!!!
The gun culture is the fascists. So yeah it was a success.
Step one was convincing these paranoid morns that the “real fascists” were people asking other politely to stop using slurs.
Best they could do for 4 years after an armed, violent attempted coup… was nothing.
Ehh…rarher choose no bullets at all? 🙄
Ban lead bullets then. Allows people to keep hunting while preventing more pollution in the wild.
Plenty of time after that to ban other things.
We did that in California. It worked.
That’s a very un-American solution. I think it would be much better to sell fire arms to eagles so they become aware of the problem and they can effectively hunt fresh prey and thereby circumvent the entire issue.
They’ve been trying. I occasionally glance through the nra’s magazine because a family member is lust-addicted to the stories of people shooting others to defend themselves, and there have been little articles in their ‘defending gun rights’ section about lead bullet bans for at least a decade now. The nra and other gun lobbies have a lot of money to throw at the issue, and have actually overturned some of the bans, I believe.
Ban lead bullets then
Are you insane? These brave Eagles are dying to protect our freedom
I read this twice. I’m trying to comprehend. The problem, I think I comprehend absolutely perfectly but my soul doesn’t want to. Am this close to screaming until hoarse and sweaty. Am at work so will see if I need to do this in the parking lot.
I dream sometimes of all the regressives in the world getting into a rocket ship and blasting off for some fantasy Planet B, leaving the progressives behind to clean up the mess.
And we do, and slowly the world heals.
Then the regressives realize that Planet B is too far away, and that Earth is actually faring pretty well now, and they try to come back.
When we don’t let them set foot on Earth, they promise to nuke us from space, and then there’s this standoff with them in orbit pointing a weapon at the only place that can support their progeny.
Yes, sure, it was “let’s talk about how to optymize our 'mmunition” kind of meme.
It’s the leading cause of death for many birds of prey in Europe too. Partly because hunters leave killed animals or their guts lying around, where the birds find them. It’s not just vultures who eat already dead prey, many species do if it’s available, like eagles. But even birds who only eat freshly killed prey (like falcons) are dying at alarming rates. Why? Because their prey often has lead embedded in their bodies. It’s not just that they eat lead because they mistake the pellets for food. One in three living ducks and geese in Europe has been shot before and has lead permanently embedded inside their body. Hunters will shoot at a swarm, kill one animal and hurt many more.
“Hunters”; that use a literal scattergun to murder animals because they lack the skill to succeed with anything less should be shamed as the pathetic little cowards they are.
If the hunting isn’t about the murder, prove it, and use a more discriminating weapon to do the job and only harm what you intend to kill and eat.
Kill hunters
“Choose lead free ammunition”
No?
Just stop shooting guns and murdering things like a crazy ape?
People don’t really change their actions very often. I mean, people are still posting on twitter, for example.
Let’s try the not poisonous bulltes first. Because something tells me that Americans can’t even do that.
OK, I think this is an incredibly stupid argument.
From the ethical perspective of anti-meat, hunting animals is so much better. They get to live natural lives, and they die in a similar manner to they do in nature (maybe a little faster, which is good).
From an environmental perspective, hunting keeps pray populations in naturally healthy levels, since most of their predators are driven out of populated areas, because people don’t like to be attacked by wild animals. It also doesn’t consume many resources, as they’re just living their lives in nature.
I don’t think there’s any valid argument against hunting honestly, besides just being grossed out by it. That’s fine, and you can just not do it. I’ve never hunted in my life, and I suspect I never will. It’s not really something I want to do. I can’t construct a good argument against it though, and I suspect you can’t either. If you can, give it a shot, and remember animals dying and being eaten is natural, and frequently necessary to maintain an equilibrium that was evolved to be maintained by external factors. Deer, for example, will die horrible deaths of starvation, and do damage to the environment, if they aren’t hunted by humans.
Just because something happens on its own in nature doesn’t mean it’s a good thing per se - for instance, I prefer the warmth of my heated house over the “natural” cold temperatures of the winter months. That’s the famous “appeal to nature” fallacy right there.
Also, like others already pointed out, hunting deer is only necessary because we eradicated most of their natural predators. Making the case for hunting today in order to fix a problem hunting created in the past feels oddly circular to me.
I mean, kinda yes, kinda no. We generally weren’t hunting predators primarily for meat, but for community safety. The meat from predators was a byproduct of not wanting a bear or something to decide our children would make for a tasty snack.
It’s just those predators were also what kept prey populations under control, so now we have to take over that role in order to prevent their extinction. Left to their own devices, they’ll overgraze and kill the areas ability to support them, and then they all die because the area won’t necessarily bounce back quickly enough as they die of starvation.
An appeal to nature is only wrong if it’s saying something is good because it happens in nature. I don’t believe I did so, except maybe saying it’s ethically better for them to live in nature than in slaughter houses. I’d love to see an argument in favor of horrible large-scale animal raising though. That’d be interesting.
It being evolutionarily necessary isn’t an appeal to nature. It’s just stating a fact. It isn’t a judgment. It’s just a statement that overpopulation causes massive issues, and prey animals evolve to have tons of children because they were hunted (by other animals than humans) . Without hunting of some kind, their populations balloon out of control.
It’s not circular, because it needs to be done. If it isn’t done we have massive problems. It doesn’t depend on any other logic. Sure, the issue was created, in part, by hunting also (a lot just because predators won’t live near population centers though), but the argument that it needs to be done isn’t dependent on you agreeing with killing predators.
I have a half assed argument against hunting, and it’s mostly my being a picky ass. Most of the time, the game around here, you get better meat from the store. So people just let it sit in their freezer and it ends up going to waste. Which reminds me, I have some moose ass in my freezer I gotta eat.
Crazy ape comment aside (i’d put it closer to apes with delusions of grandeur but that’s just me), not shooting guns and allowing hunting aren’t mutually exclusive.
Especially given all the hunting that happened pre-gun.
I don’t know if it’s on purpose but your answer seems to be ignoring a lot of the realities of how the things you are proposing would work (or not work, as the case may be).
Sure, you can hunt without guns. I don’t really see an argument for not using them though, as long as there’s no lead. What’s really the ethical or environment argument in favor of only allowing bows, or whatever? I see the emotional appeal, if people have a negative view of guns. Not a logical appeal though, besides maybe making them harder to access to prevent deaths by firearms. If you can ban hunting with firearms, you can also just ban using lead ammo, so I don’t see how banning them is the best option in general.
I didn’t make any proposals in my above comment. It’s entirely statements of observations. I don’t know what you mean by saying you don’t see how they would work or not. I gave explanations of why hunting isn’t negative, and is often positive, but not any proposals of how anything should be done. Would you care to elaborate?
You must be exhausted after all those huge jumps in logic and reasoning.
You must be pretty rested, because you didn’t even try to make an argument. What were the leaps in logic? Can you actually explain, or are you just implying there are to sound smart, but can’t actually identify any?
We killed the predators on a lot of our continent. Deer hunting is ecologically necessary here. And thats before we get into the boar problem
ecologically necessary
Not if wolves were reintroduced to native levels.
Yes, and you all understand just how controversial it is to do as well, considering that reintroducing predators is something people are trying on both our continents. Reintroducing wolves to the forests of the eastern united states may happen in my lifetime but is unlikely as the people who live where they would be enjoy hunting for meat and don’t like the idea of having to shoot wolves that get too bold. They’re currently controversially being reintroduced in the West like near Yellowstone. Other predators like cougars also need to be allowed to populate more. Even then though, nothing on this continent but humans is taking down boars. They’re giant and massively invasive, an ecological calamity.
But for the time being, hunters should be switching to lead free shot, and they should continue hunting white tail deer. Target shooters should also be using lead free shot, in general if you don’t want particles of it in your bloodstream don’t shoot with it.
The wolves were driven off for a reason. They had a tendency to snack on pets, livestock and small children until they learned to fear us. Those issues all come back if they stop fearing us again.
Coyotes are also present in many places in the US, and birds of prey can harm pets too.
No excuse for eliminating a healthy and necessary species from the ecology. Human ego trumps all
The American mind cannot comprehend this. Probably due to neurological symptoms from lead poisoning or sth
What are you even talking about? There are plenty of people that hunt even here in Germany.
Americans don’t have a monopoly on hunting.
I’m talking about a whole country being obsessed with owning and firing guns. I don’t observe that in Germany. Also a hunters license comes with mandatory education about responsibility and preserving wildlife.
So do hunting licenses in the US. Wildlife enforcement has some of the most authority in the state.
The issue is the states allow inherently unsafe munitions to be used. If they changed hunters in the US would comply
We have a monopoly on hunting 30-50 feral hogs tyvm
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Not sure if you’re American or not but here’s a question for you. These bald eagles are allegedly dying from lead poisoning from eating creatures shot by lead bullets/pellets. This must mean they are scavenging. Yes, I know bald eagles do that a lot but they also kill their own prey. So why aren’t vultures dying of this lead poisoning. Vultures only scavenge so it should happen much more often.
Here’s another thought. 80% of eagles brought into a clinic may be dying of lead poisoning but that 80% is part of a small number overall. Notice they never say how many eagles are brought in.
Here’s another thought for you: When someone says such and such is the fastest growing demographic for such and such a thing, it could just mean that there were very few such incidences. 2 such incidences occurred when there used to be just one. WOW! Hundred percent increase? Such incidences have DOUBLED!
Don’t let Rita Skeeter twist your thoughts. Get the whole story.
Ingestion of lead ammunition is the primary reason California Condors (obligate carrion eaters) almost became extinct, are still endangered, and aren’t having the greatest success with being reintroduced.
As for bald eagles, they’re lazy smart, if they see takeout just sitting there, they’re not gonna make dinner from scratch.
Secondary reply: I don’t know If I’d call bald eagles smart. When I drive by a road kill that has vultures and a bald eagle feasting at it, the vultures fly away from the road while the stupid eagle flies right in front of my car. I’ve nearly had them smash into my windshield several times. It is now my standard reaction to slow down if I see a bald eagle eating road kill. I don’t worry about the vultures because they know what to do.
BTW, bald eagles were nearly driven extinct by DDT. We quit using that so bald eagles are now numerous enough that I have to brake to keep from hitting while they eat road kill despite the lead poisoning.
Not denying the condor thing. Still didn’t answer the vulture thing. Yes, I know condors are a type of vulture but so are black vultures and turkey vultures which are more common than ever.
A lot of wildlife rehabs don’t deal with the non-endangered or threatened birds. Several years ago a friend of mine found an injured bird of some sort and we called around trying to find help for it but all of the local rehabbers said if it wasn’t a bald eagle they couldn’t help. So because most vultures aren’t endangered afaik, they just die and probably nobody is keeping track.
I couldn’t tell you and I don’t really care. Just jumping on the opportunity to mock gun culture
The overwhelming majority of bullets are used against paper or steel targets. Most hunters take the entire carcass for butchering, so the eagles aren’t eating lead from animals shot and left in the wilderness. And given the volume needed, I wouldn’t be surprised that they’re eating fragments fired at steel targets that they mistake for rocks to keep in their stomach to grind up food.
This is untrue, gastroliths are associated only with birds that eat plants. They grind up food, which isn’t necessary for meat. Eagles eat bullets from animals that have either been shot and abandoned, lost, or had parts of them discarded as zqxwas pointed out.
Don’t know what they do over there, but we usually get the lungs and guts out as soon as possible in order to keep the meat from spoiling. Long lived predators that likes to scavenge can develop lead poisoning from those remains if it’s their main source of food.
If confusing with rocks was the main source you’d expect it to be just as common in other birds.
Does that mean hunters also eat lead?
You tend to be generous with what you discard because you don’t want to eat lead.
I could only find one report where they measured Pb in blood. People who self reported eating game meat in Utah had 30% higher lead levels than people who did not.
That’s why I also mentioned to stop shooting guns. If you are shooting in such an unsafe way that fragments fly around and get lost, then you shouldn’t be allowed to shoot in the first place.
You’re not familiar with the concept of an outdoor target range, are you?
Yeah, it is a problem.
Would it be without leaded bullets?
Yes, if there are bullets or parts of metal that fly randomly, it is always going to be a hazard. Even without lead poisoning, I don’t believe that chunks of metal in the digestive system would be good for this bird, or any other animal. And what is the point, what good does a stupid outdoors gun range bring? Even if you think that it’s fine for people to learn how to be better at shooting deadly weapons, what does an outdoors setting bring other than risks?
They’re cheaper to build and maintain, they’re more robust, they’re more dispersed, they can accommodate longer ranges, and they’re less restrictive on types of ammunition and types of firearms.
Plenty of people hunt for food. Lead ammo should be avoided though.
I think you might have some ontologically incongruous standards. We are crazy apes. You can take the guns away, but the murder will persist for millennia, if not gene edited out. Banning the guns and lead bullets is more likely to work than expecting humanity to spontaneously diverge from its evolutionary roots as a bang bus murder ape
I don’t know, humans are good at diverging from their instincts when it comes to letting sick people die, but when it comes to killing less, they cannot anymore?
I think that low-ass standards are what prevent humans from getting any better, if you start justifying mindless murders as “just instinct” then of course people will be fine with it. And funnily enough, that’s one of the main arguments that hunters use, saying that they’re just doing something “natural”.
We are killing less. And overwhelmingly so. If you don’t count faceless, recontectualized packaged cow, chicken, and pig meat. We’re also still pretty good about keeping our close group alive, but medicine men, insurance, and numbers over 100 are a strictly cultural practice not cemented within our genetic memory in any helpful way, so society as a whole suffers under the burden of our limited empathy.
You can also get into the economics of governance to get a good look at what it would mean to move the systems in place enough to reach the sort of universal socioeconomic safety that you’d personally find acceptable. I’m a fan of Europe’s deal… up to a point.
I really don’t mean to cut things off, but the scope of this conversation would necessarily reach so incredibly wide that I don’t believe I can keep your attention or mine for a dozen pages of philosophy, biology, anthropology, history, psychology, and economics. In short, I, personally, can only expect people to fit neatly into a groove so long as it isn’t too far removed from the one we dug a hundred thousand years ago. Certain people have done too much to remove themselves, and to some degree us, from personal responsibility in the US to do anything but set fire to what we have.
… bang bus murder ape
Adding that into my book of wonderful phrases.
Just don’t credit me, I’m pretty sure I plagiarized it in part from elsewhere
You can use steel shot
The US banned lead birdshot in 1991. Are they eating squirrels?
Ungulates and rodents, mostly.
Birdshot is only banned for migratory bird hunting. Many landowners shoot woodchucks with rifles because they dig holes that livestock step in and break their legs, also the holes cause problems with equipment - they most often use lead bullets and leave the carcasses for the wildlife to dispose of. Some have switched to green ammunition but few have. We need to raise awareness for the need to switch to non-toxic ammunition. Maybe a bill that subsidies green ammunition with a small tax on lead ammunition could help.
Eagles will eat just about anything they physically can so probably lots of squirrels, rabbits, smaller possums and raccoons but also eagles will sometimes eat carrion so I could certainly imagine they sometimes get this off something like a deer carcass.
I was trying to think of what is getting shot with lead but still getting away. I just spent however long reading about wound rates for deer. Which is low, but yeah. One thing I wonder is if it has anything to do with the amount of fish they would be eating. No other north American raptor eats fish like bald eagles do that I can think of.
I mentioned above that varmints are often shot with lead bullets and left in the field, however fishermen use lead sinkers that fish and ducks ingest then eagles eat them. Eagles are extremely sensitive to lead poisoning and other poisons like DDT. There is a push to change that with alternative less toxic materials.
It’s lead shot California condors went extinct in the wild because of lead poisoning from birdshot but they bred some in captivity and reintroduced them.
I thought that was due to johnny cash
IIRC, some bald eagles were found with neurological issues caused by nicotine from cigarette butts too.
People still use lead target shells all the time
This is partly why I haven’t got into air rifles, I have wanted to for a long time, but there is no good place to shoot it nearby.
Some may say that I should just go out in the woods and shoot there, but I don’t want to spread lead in nature.
I know there are lead free pellets, but I have heard mixed opinions about them.
Why an air rifle specifically?
Because I can get a low power one (10J muzzle energy) without a license, and I can’t be arsed to get a license for a proper firearm as it requires a fair commitment here.
You can get pellets and ball ammo in other materials. Might have to special order them, not sure how available they are over there, but they do make them. I have steel ammo for my air pistol, it’s my back yard pleasure shooting gun, so lead isn’t acceptable to me.
I live in an apartment, so I need to find a good place to shoot before I get a rifle, I’ll also checkout what other kinds of pellets I can get.
If you just want to plink in your backyard then just get a BB gun that shoots steel BBs. And only use iron sights which will teach you instinctive aiming. I’d say that’s actually way more fun than a scoped air rifle. If you’re not going to be head shorting squirrels then you don’t really need the accuracy of a dialed in air rifle. Looking in a scope at a piece of paper and shooting the same hole looses its appeal pretty quickly.
For Air rifles you can have a bullet catcher that is basically a funny shaped tin can you put your paper target in front of. It will collect the lead if you hit the target.
Yeah, I just know I am bound to miss and don’t want to contaminate anything.
I can’t be asked to get a license for a proper firearm
My god, what tyranny you live under, please tell me what authoritarian country you live in so uncle sam can come free you after we’re finished with Iran.
Hehe, I’d be happy to tell you my general understanding of the laws, I am not a gun nut, and there are probably a few details I get wrong.
Anyway.
In Sweden you can only get a gun for two reasons, hunting or competition, getting a gun for self defense is illegal.
To get a gun for either reason, you need to pass tests and for competition licenses, display an active need for the gun in competitions.
Wikipedia has a better summary of the laws on this page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation#Sweden
Unfortunately, the most American thing this girl had ever heard of is also strongly affecting white-tailed sea eagles and other raptors in Germany and neighboring countries. Choose lead free ammo, folks. https://www.bund.net/themen/naturschutz/jagd/bleimunition/
