Editor's note: This story was produced for the ear and designed to be heard. If you're able, WCMU encourages you to listen to the audio version of this story by clicking the LISTEN button above. This transcript was edited for clarity and length.
Tina Sawyer: This November in Michigan, many hunters hope to bag a few deer this firearm season. But, one northern Michigan wildlife rehab center is urging hunters before they go to check their ammo. I sat down recently with Sherry Garver and Lisa Mogg from the Association to Rescue Kritters, or ARK, of St Helen to discuss the dangers of lead poisoning in wild animals. Sherry started the conversation by explaining how lead poisoning is on the rise in northern Michigan, especially in birds.
Sherry Garver: Recently, our assistant director performed 25 lead tests on vultures, eagles, hawks. 23 out of 25 tested positive for lead. Most of those those were first years, which meant that because lead can accumulate in the body, they've already started accumulating lead from what their parents were feeding them. The 2 species that did not have evidence of lead poisoning were broad-winged hawks, and that's because they primarily eat frogs. Any animal that would scavenge is going to probably test high for lead. We just don't test them because it's expensive.
Lisa Mogg: A lot of it's that they're eating fish, and now we've started x-raying all the fish, and the number of fish we find, sinkers, lures, things in, but the lead sinkers is the big culprit, but gut piles.
TS: I was going to say, what is a gut pile?
SG: In 1991, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife banned lead shot in waterfowl. So we haven't used lead shot for a while, but we are still able to use lead bullets. But the problem is, when it hits the deer, it fragments into a couple 100 little microscopic pieces, which contaminates the guts, the insides. That meat, the hunter will then field dress the deer, and usually they'll leave the gut pile, and then later, Eagles and opossum and fox will come and scavenge that. And that's how they get it. only takes a piece of lead the size of a grain of rice to kill an eagle.
TS: And do you find that happens quite often?
SG: Yes. When we get an animal and we'll lead test it, each animal is going to have a different concentration of lead in their system. When they're really bad, it's horrible. They can't balance. They can't hold their head up. They have seizures. And in which case, we will do calcium EDTA shots in the breast twice a day for five days, let them rest.
TS: Now, is it just birds of prey that you're getting in with the lead poisoning, or is there other animals that you're taking into?
SG: Yeah, so I suspect that there's quite a few animals that are walking around with lead poisoning, but it tends to be the raptors that we test.
LM: The birds, I think we notice at first because they can't get off the ground anymore. You're going to notice them because they're down, whereas other animals, we're used to seeing them on the ground. But when you see an eagle down on the ground all day, somebody's like, that's weird, and they'll give us a call.
SG: So the safest thing is to not hunt with lead.
TS: What can the hunters do?
SG: It's best to go to a solid copper bullet. It's a little more expensive, but it's the safe way to go. Best for the environment, best for your family who are going to be eating that meat.
TS: Now that we're getting into the fall months, do your calls increase from households that say, hey, this little raccoon is in my garage?
SG: So this is actually our slower time of the year.
TS: Really?
SG: Yeah. Baby season, which usually starts in March when all the spring babies are born, are when we get our primary amount of calls. This time of year, we'll see a lot of injuries. So it'll be hit by a car.
LM: This time of year, it's a lot of young raptors. We get a lot of hawks and owls and things that are trying to learn to hunt. on their own and not paying attention to that car while they're focused on that mouse running or something.
SG: This year, we are close to having admitted 1,800 animals, which is a new record. Yeah.
TS: Can you discuss how the public, besides volunteering, how they can help wildlife if they see something in distress.
SG: The best thing you can do is keep it warm and quiet and don't feed it. It's very difficult for us to undo some of the bad things that are going on with a baby animal when people have tried to give it cow's milk and they're lactose intolerant.
LM: Everything needs hydrated before it has anything, but even if someone tries to hydrate before the body temperature's up, it will go into organ failure. So we just request that people keep things warm in contact, and then we can guide. So those are things we have to be all trained and very conscious of. Now, avian influenza is a big thing with the birds. So many things that we have to be educated on to try to prevent spreading those things.
TS: That was Lisa Mogg and Sherry Garver with ARK of Saint Helen talking with me about the dangers of lead poisoning in wildlife and how the community can help.
