Eagles suffer 'gruesome' deaths from lead

DECATUR, Ill. (WAND) – Breathing heavily with fluids draining from its mouth, a bald eagle struggled through its final hours at the Illinois Raptor Center in Decatur. The majestic bird did not survive.

“It’s a pretty gruesome death,” Jack Nuzzo at the Raptor Center told the WAND News I-TEAM. “I just get angrier, angrier and angrier when I see it.”

The culprit? Lead. Lead poisoning is killing birds in numerous states across the nation.

In the mid-20^th century, bald eagles came to the brink of extinction because of the pesticide DDT. Since DDT was banned in the 1970s, the eagles have been making a comeback and have been removed from the endangered species list. But now they are facing a new threat from lead.

Hunters kill deer and leave their gut piles in fields, which eagles feed on. The remains of the deer most often have lead shot, which the eagles consume, eventually building up to toxic levels in their systems. Lead can also be found in lakes and rivers which waterfowl feed on from fishing weights.

A study the journal Science released in February found harmful levels of lead were in 46% of bald eagles sampled in 38 states. The ability to save the bird is often very low.

“We’ve had 16 lead eagles come in (since 2018) and none of them have made it,” Nuzzo said.