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Golden Eagle euthanized after severe lead poisoning diagnosis

The Raptor Center said it flushed the eagle's stomach of lead pellets but the lead had already caused irreversible damage to the golden eagle.

ST PAUL, Minn. — Hunting season is in full swing and the University of Minnesota Raptor Center is asking folks to be mindful of what type of ammunition they choose to use.

Red-tailed hawks and bald eagles are regulars at the Raptor Center in Saint Paul. 

"Bald eagles we get 160 to 180 a year," executive director Dr. Julia Ponder said. "Golden's we just get a small handful. This is not the area that they're in great numbers. There's more of them out West."

So the arrival of a golden eagle wasn't necessarily a surprise to Dr. Ponder, but it also wasn't a common scene.

"Initially the bird was just depressed and it could have been head-trauma," she said. "It was found by the side of the road and possibly hit by a car. Depression-- just not neurologically a 100 percent. The next day he was much feistier. Over the next few days, his neurological condition deteriorated rapidly."

Dr. Ponder said it's protocol to test all incoming eagles for lead. Results showed that for this particular golden eagle, it was already too late.

"Lead toxicity was what the bird was suffering from," she explained. "We did humanely euthanize him because we know from our studies and research that the brain is basically Swiss cheese by the time we get to those levels of signs that we were seeing with this bird."

Ponder said they flushed eight lead pellets from his stomach in an attempt to stop the lead of continuing havoc. X-rays of the bird showed eight small pellets inside the bird.

"Those are the lead pellets in his abdomen," Ponder explained. "Doesn't look very big, doesn't look very dramatic but any one of those is enough to kill an eagle."

She added that there was no way to know for sure but said eagles that end up with lead usually do so through eating.

"Typically what we assume is that eagles either get it through scavenging on carcasses or their prey that had been shot with a pellet gun or some kind of ammunition," she said. 

She said she wanted to let others know that they have a choice when it comes to what ammunition they used to hunt. 

"Lead ammunition has been the traditional type of ammunition used," she said. "It's either all lead or copper-jacketed lead. Lead is cheap. It is very heavy so it makes good ballistics, and it's what people are familiar with. Some people don't know any different so they don't know how to make a different choice."

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife said alternatives to lead bullets can be made of harder metals like copper. It said copper ammunition is less likely to break into small pieces, is less toxic compared to lead and also dissolves slower.

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