Utah wildlife center calls for changes after bald eagle dies of lead poisoning

OGDEN — A wildlife rehabilitation center in Utah is again calling on hunters to switch to lead-free ammunition after a bald eagle died of lead poisoning.

Utah Division of Wildlife Resources conservation officers rescued the male bald eagle from a field in Willard, Box Elder county, on Friday after receiving a tip that the bird had been acting strangely and had been down in the field for a couple of days, said Buz Marthaler, co-founder and board chairman of the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah.

The eagle was taken to the center in Ogden where it was quickly treated for suspected lead poisoning.

“Looking at it, it was in good shape. but it had all the displays of lead poisoning,” Marthaler told KSL.com on Monday.

Wildlife rehabilitation staff injected the bird with a type of medication that helps animals rid of any lead from their bloodstream, but the bird died during a testing procedure the following morning. The cause of death was confirmed through a special testing machine.

Marthaler said staff usually get a few days to help treat a bird; however, the situation was likely too severe to make a difference. The center posted about the eagle’s death on social media Sunday, given it’s an all-too-familiar — and preventable — situation for wildlife rehabilitation experts.

Lead poisoning often occurs when carrion — an eagle in this case — consumes gut piles left out from a hunted animal shot with lead ammunition, the center explained in its post. Lead is typically “dispersed along a fairly wide path” that the slug travels, staff added.

It doesn’t take much lead to cause serious illness. A lead fragment the size of a grain of rice is enough to kill an eagle, the Wildlife Center of Virginia points out.

Marthaler said the Utah center often receives cases like last week’s bald eagle once the rifle hunting season starts. It continues until about March when the season ends. The Ogden center, he adds, normally receives three to five eagle cases during that time, but that’s only based on birds that are found. He suspects many more cases will never be reported because they’re in remote areas.

“Since we’ve started, I do not know of a year where we have not received a lead-poisoned bald or golden eagle,” he said.

Many conservation groups, such as the Peregrine Fund, have advocated lead-free ammunition in recent years because it’s seen as the simplest solution. The only problem is that copper ammunition is normally more expensive than traditional lead-based options, which has made it difficult for lead-free to become the standard.

It’s why the group has even partnered with Utah wildlife officials to offer hunters up to $50 in savings for non-lead ammunition and other prizes before they hunt out in the state’s Zion Unit — an area home to dozens of critically endangered California condors. The program, which began in 2011, has had some success.

However, last year’s death of a famed condor showed lead remains an issue within the Utah-Arizona flock.

“Lead poisoning is the leading cause of death for free-flying condors in Utah and Arizona. We are very grateful for all the hunters who are taking steps to not only help in the recovery of California condors but to also prevent impacts to eagles and hawks, as well,” said Danielle Finlayson, a biologist for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources’s southern region, in October.

Marthaler hopes for something similar in northern Utah, especially as bald eagles tend to return to the region between late fall and early spring as part of their normal migration pattern. His goal is not to lose another eagle to lead poisoning.

“Now that we’ve officially — after how many hundreds of years — made the bald eagle our national bird, I think it’s even more important,” he said. “We need to look after it and our wild places.”