Lead Poisoning as a Mortality Factor in Waterfowl Populations

Abstract

The mortality resulting from lead poisoning in populations of wild waterfowl has been a cause of concern to conservationists for many years. This concern has grown out of the knowledge that lead poisoning is of common occurrence among waterfowl, that this poisoning results from the ingestion of lead by the birds in their feeding, and that large numbers of lead pellets fired from the guns of hunters lie in lakes and marshes visited by waterfowl. The present paper is devoted primarily to the evaluation of losses resulting from lead poisoning in wild waterfowl populations. The approach toward evaluating the importance of lead poisoning in wild waterfowl was threefold : ( 1 ) appraisal of the incidence and magnitude of waterfowl die-offs resulting from lead poisoning, (2) appraisal of the incidence of ingested lead shot among waterfowl populations in fall and early winter, and (3) appraisal of waterfowl losses resulting from the ingestion of various quantities of lead shot per bird.