When a bald eagle was brought to a wildlife
rehabilitation center late last month, he was paralyzed and couldn't even hold
his head up.
People had to carry the motionless bird. His head
rested on his wing. Rescuers rushed to cleanse his blood of the poison that was
slowly strangling the life out of him.
Bald eagle cannot hold head up because of lead
poisoning
This happens to bald eagles all the time. And Lynn
Tompkins, executive director of Blue Mountain Wildlife Rehabilitation and
Education Center in Oregon, has been trying to save them for 30 years.
"His head was upside down when we got
him," Tompkins told The Dodo. "Lead affects the nerves, so that's
your brain, your use of muscles, all parts of the body. The birds often cannot
stand ... They usually have difficulty breathing. They cannot even open their
beaks."
The lead gets into the bodies of bald eagles - as
well as owls and other kinds of raptors - after they've eaten dead animals shot
by hunters who use lead bullets. "Raptors are quite
willing to be scavengers, so they scavenge,"
she said. "They eat things that have been shot. Lead ammunition is the
biggest source."Birds with more severe poisoning who manage to survive
take months to treat and fully rehabilitate. "We had one eagle whose lead
level was relatively low, but she was paralyzed, she couldn't stand, she
couldn't unclench her feet," Tomkins said. "It took several
treatments to get the lead level down. It took several months for her to fly
normally again. It took six months. That was a long time."Even when bald
eagles suffer from lower levels of lead exposure, their coordination and
decision-making can be compromised. "This can put him in more dangerous
positions, like scavenging along the road for roadkill and then he can be hit
by a car," Tompkins explained.
As Tompkins' latest patient was struggling for his
life, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, was overturning a ban on
the use of lead ammunition in wildlife refuges.
The ban aimed to help save animals, including the
iconic American bald eagle, from dying slow deaths from lead. Zinke argued that
the interests of hunters were not sufficiently represented in the ban.Sadly,
the latest bald eagle who came into the center never had a chance to fly freely
again. After four days of treatments to clean the lead out of his bloodstream,
the bird's body finally succumbed to the poison that had already reached his
tissue. "This particular bird, every once in a while, he'd get startled
and flap his wing out of fear, and then he'd stop," Tompkins remembered.
"The treatment cannot reach the lead that's already gotten into other
tissues."
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