Wisconsin wildlife workers warn of toxic lead

MILWAUKEE — As Wisconsin's inland-water fishing season opens Saturday, those who work with sick and injured wildlife say they're pushing an urgent message for the thousands of people taking to the lakes and streams: Get the lead out.

They say it's time to take the lead sinkers out of the tackle boxes, safely dispose of them as toxic waste and look for replacements made from things like steel, tin and other metals.

It's a personal campaign for people like Marge Gibson and Jeannie Lord. The bird rehabilitators have seen bald eagles, trumpeter swans, geese, loons and other birds suffer and die from lead poisoning.

"All it takes is one of those sinkers, one, a single one, to kill a bald eagle or a trumpeter swan," said Gibson, executive director of the Raptor Education Group Inc. at Antigo in northeastern Wisconsin. "It stays in the stomach or crop. It's almost impossible to get it out."

Some states have acted to prevent sales or use of small lead sinkers and fishing jigs.

Vermont's ban on lead sinkers weighing a half-ounce or less took effect this spring. Other moves to curb use of small lead fishing gear have been passed in New Hampshire, Maine, New York and Massachusetts.

The danger that lead poses to loons, the state bird in Minnesota, led that state's Pollution Control Agency to create a Web page promoting the use of nontoxic fishing tackle.

The use of lead shot as ammunition in waterfowl hunting has been banned nationwide since 1991 because of the hazard that spent shot created in lakes and wetlands.

Gibson said lead fishing gear that breaks away or is tossed into the water and sinks to the bottom poses the same threat.

"Whether it's from past hunting, or whether it's sinkers, it's kind of a hard guestimate," she said, but the effect on birds is the same.

Swans, loons and other waterfowl can ingest the lead while seining lake bottoms for food. Sinkers can be swallowed along with the pebbles that go in the birds' crop to help grind food.

Eagles can pick up lead while eating contaminated fish or other prey.

Once the lead poisoning takes hold, the bird loses strength and suffers various symptoms leading to an inability to fly or feed and ultimately to death.

If a bird is rescued, the procedure for removing the lead is expensive and arduous, Gibson said, and the poisoning can leave permanent damage.

A bald eagle with severe lead poisoning has been undergoing treatment at Lord's Pine View Wildlife Rehabilitation Center near Fredonia in southeastern Wisconsin. The weakened bird was found in a back yard in West Bend on March 17.

A check by a veterinarian this week showed the eagle is "coping better than we would as humans," Lord said, but it still needed more anti-lead treatment. Then it will be studied to determine to what extent the lead affected the bird.

She said news reports about the case had a welcome side-effect: About two dozen people called to say they hadn't known fishing gear could pose such dangers.

"They said they're throwing out the West Bend.

"I took all the lead sinkers and everything lead out of my tackle box," Bejma said. "I never gave it a thought that the lead sinkers contribute to that problem."

His only difficulty, he said, was that the sports shops he checked didn't have any nontoxic sinkers he could buy without special-ordering them. He planned to keep looking.

In Antigo, Gibson has teamed with LoonWatch, a program of the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute at Northland College in Ashland, to get bright orange signs posted at northwoods boat landings urging the use of non-lead tackle.

While some anglers have objected to the higher cost of non-lead equipment, wildlife ecologist Owen Boyle of the state Department of Natural Resources said he suspects the expense is minor compared with overall costs of going fishing.

"It's a small price to pay for saving loons and eagles and other birds," he said.