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(WTAJ) — With the fishing season starting, and the spring gobbler season right around the corner, community members are concerned about lead poisoning in birds after at least four were treated at Centre Wildlife Rescue in just the last two weeks.
Birds they’ve treated include a bald eagle, a duck and a turkey vulture. Executive Director and Founder Robyn Graboski said they’ve seen it in owls and hawks.
“[Lead] gets into their digestive system, and it starts dissolving and gets into the bloodstream and it makes them sick,” Graboski said. “It affects their cognitive abilities, so they’re more likely to get hit by cars.”
Graboski said many times they’ll get injured animals and then realize they have lead poisoning.
Unfortunately, the vulture they’ve treated in the past two weeks did not survive, but the other three animals were able to make good recoveries.
However, many more birds across the region are suspected of suffering from lead poisoning, including a swan that’s resided at Lakemont in Altoona for the past two weeks.
Volunteers tried rescuing that swan in kayaks on Thursday. Volunteer and Wildlife CT Michael Kensinger said it may have been poisoned from either eating fish that were contaminated by lead tackle or by eating the lead material itself.
“Even a single lead fishing sinker swallowed by a swan is enough to kill it,” Kensinger said. “These birds by now should be in Canada. A high number of swans get poisoned from lead sinkers and things like that in the water.”
Kensinger said it’s very unusual to see the specific tundra swan by itself, and the rest of its flock left without it about two weeks ago.
The swan flew away when Kensinger and the other two volunteers when they got closer to it, which they say is a good sign, but it still looked weak when it struggled to get up off the water and didn’t have a more graceful flight path.
“Hopefully it will get to another body of water before it has to come down and not come down on I-99,” Kensinger said.
It’s Kensinger’s second swan rescue attempt in the span of a week. He said a solution is using non-lead alternatives like tungsten and tin tackle for fishing and steel ammo for hunting.
“A lot of people think the lead bullets will go through and won’t leave any residue,” Graboski said. “Well, it absolutely does, it leaves that powdery residue, and when animals eat that meat from the carcasses, it actually gets into the bloodstream much quicker.”
The obstacle, however, is the alternatives are more expensive. Plus, tin is lighter than lead.
“It takes a lot more to get your bait down to the bottom of the water where the fish are,” Creg Strock, owner of Aquatic Imitations tackle shop in Blair County said.
And although it’s being banned in other states, lead is still legal for many uses in Pennsylvania. Strock said, however, there is a bit of progress in the Keystone State.
“In my younger days, we bought led wheel weights and melted them down and made sinkers,” Strock said. “You can’t buy the weights anymore out of scrap yards unless you have a hazardous materials certificate.”
Kensinger said spending just a little more on non-lead products will not only keep wildlife safe, but people too.
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“We’re learning more and more what these things do to people, what they do to the environment,” Kensinger said. “I just think a little bit goes a long way.”
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