By Sara Amundson and Kitty Block
Some threats facing animals can seem so gargantuan as to be just part of the status quo—but we are determined to change the systemic injustices that harm countless animals. In addition to fighting cruel trophy hunting practices that cause egregious suffering for target animals, we’ve been pushing for reform that could save the lives of countless animals killed accidentally because of the use of lead ammunition.
Lead is a long-lasting toxic metal that can be deadly if ingested. Because of years of hunting with lead ammunition, this dangerous substance is all over our environment, and scientists consider the use of lead ammunition to be the greatest unregulated source of lead knowingly released into the environment in the United States.
For wildlife, a single ingested shotgun pellet or bullet fragment is sufficient to cause brain damage in birds of many species, resulting in inhibition of critical avian neuromuscular, auditory, and visual responses. Lead poisoning can induce lethargy, blindness, paralysis of the lungs and intestinal tract, the failure of various organs, seizure and death in wild animals. It incidentally kills millions of wild animals a year. Lead poisoning is the leading cause of death for California condors, threatening them with near extinction, and is similarly a hazard to scavengers including eagles, vultures, owls and hawks. For instance, lead fragments in carcasses left behind from mass, recreational shootings of prairie dogs and Richardson’s ground squirrels (often permitted on federal public lands) can wind up killing raptors looking for a meal. Studies going back more than a century have documented that lead is harmful and a danger to at least 134 wildlife species.
For the first time at seven National Wildlife Refuges, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is encouraging hunters to switch to lead-free ammunition for the fall 2024 hunting season. By subsidizing the switch to lead-free products, the program seeks to expand the popularity and market share for nontoxic ammunition.
We support this move because phasing out the use of lead ammunition is in the best interests of human, wildlife and ecosystem health. In 2014, with other groups, we filed a legal petition to help push the U.S. Department of the Interior to require the use of nonlead ammunition on more than 160 million acres of FWS and National Park Service lands. More recently as part of another coalition, we urged the Hunting and Fishing Wildlife Council, an advisory group within the FWS, to support the phaseout of lead ammunition and tackle for hunting and angling on all public lands, including those managed by the U.S. Department of Interior and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. We’re determined to see the end of the use of lead ammunition altogether because no animal should have to die of lead poisoning.
This program is a start—but there’s still a way to go. The National Rifle Association and other interest groups have long argued that the additional cost of nonlead ammunition constitutes a barrier to access for some hunters. Now that argument should be moot, for the FWS’s approach removes this barrier; there’s no reasonable justification, now, to use ammunition that harms the health of everyone. This program doesn’t impede anyone from hunting, and now it won’t cost hunters more to go lead-free. According to a 2021 shooting industry study, lead-free ammunition costs 25% more than lead. But shifting the paradigm should help to increase demand and decrease prices. As it is, the cost of life associated with using lead is simply too high.
Hunters often proclaim their commitment to land and ecosystem conservation, so it’s surprising that going lead-free has been met with so much resistance. So many seem dug in against any regulation, and the record of the NRA and other special interest groups is even worse when it comes to the scientific conservation case against lead. They are simply wrong to question the ample evidence that lead ammunition constitutes a dire threat to wildlife.
The evidence goes back at least four decades. Some 2 million ducks and geese per year died of lead poisoning before the FWS banned toxic lead ammunition for waterfowl hunting in 1991, and within 10 years, researchers found significant improvements in the blood and bone lead levels in a variety of waterfowl species. The use of nontoxic ammunition reduced the mortality of mallards by 64% and saved approximately 1.4 million ducks in the 1997 fall flight of some 90 million ducks.
Today, abundant scientific data indicates lead is unsafe for humans and wildlife. People who consume meat from animals killed with lead ammunition put themselves at risk of lead exposure. There is no established safe level for intake of lead in humans, and its toxic effects are largely irreversible.
On public safety grounds alone, a ban is long overdue. Understanding what it means for wildlife and people, a few determined government officials have moved to ban or reduce lead ammunition, but the pushback has been immense. In early 2017, for example, the outgoing FWS director issued an order to phase out the use of lead ammunition and fishing tackle by January 2022 on all FWS land and waters including 567 national wildlife refuges and 38 wetland management districts, but this directive did not survive a transition to a new administration.
We’ve seen some progress, including a lead ammunition ban in California, and the FWS program marks a good start toward eliminating the sweeping negative effects of lead ammunition. While regulatory actions are often desirable, non-regulatory initiatives such as this one can help to avoid pervasive congressional challenges, such as the long-standing prohibition on regulating lead ammunition in federal appropriations bills.
Being poisoned by lead in the environment is simply unacceptable for anyone, human or animal. We have seen the avoidable harms that lead poses in communities far too often. We are pleased to see the FWS take this initiative to keep toxic lead ammunition off public lands, and we will continue to support and encourage more of these programs at other agencies. It’s time to change the status quo, and it’s especially time for the interest groups that have been fighting against this reform for years to finally stand down.
Kitty Block is CEO of the Humane Society of the United States.