Alternatives to lead shot in duck hunting
By Ellyn Ferguson
GANNETT NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON — When the federal government banned lead shot for hunting duck and other waterfowl, hunters complained that the alternative might be safer for the environment but not as effective in bringing down birds.
Now more than a decade later U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service officials believe they have struck a balance in satisfying hunters and in protecting waterfowl and mammals from lead poisoning from pellets left behind in lakes and marshes.
The service has approved 11 nontoxic alternatives since the ban and is reviewing another four. The agency is seeking public comment. People can e-mail comments to the wildlife service by Friday. The service is a bureau of the Department of the Interior.
George Allen, the biologist at the service who works on company applications for approval of non-lead alternatives, said the firms submit research and testing that answer federal government concerns about the toxicity levels of the metals used in the alternative shot.
"All of them, even at their worst, are better than lead," Allen said.
But Allen said the bureau would revisit any nontoxic alternatives if questions about their environmental safety arise.
"That's part of the scientific process," Allen said.
A national ban on lead shot for waterfowl hunting took effect in 1991. The federal government took the step as evidence of lead poisoning deaths among ducks mounted. Hunters are allowed to use lead shot in hunting turkeys, mourning doves and other birds considered at lower-risk for poisoning because of their dry land habitat.
The federal ban came at a time when hunting officials in several states had become concerned about reports of bird deaths tied to their ingestion of lead.
"We maintained there needed to be alternatives because we were losing too many waterfowl to lead toxicosis," said Derrell Shipes with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources.
Most of the studies done on the effect of the lead ban were conducted several years after it took effect. A study of the 1996 and 1997 waterfowl season in the migratory path that stretches from Alaska along the Mississippi River Valley estimated the ban reduced lead poisoning in mallards by 64 percent.
The U.S. Geological Survey, which does scientific research for federal bureaus such as the wildlife service, says eating waterfowl that have ingested lead generally does not pose a health threat. However, people who eat lead shot embedded in duck meat might develop lead poisoning or appendicitis.
Shipes, chief of statewide projects, research and surveys, said research on ducks in South Carolina's prime hunting areas — the former rice fields along the East Coast — found high lead concentrations.
In Wisconsin, state officials banned lead shot about two years before the federal government due to "the number of ducks we saw dying from ingestion of lead shot," said George Meyer, executive director of an alliance of hunting, fishing and trapping groups known as the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation.
Many hunters grumbled about the effectiveness and higher cost of the steel shot that replaced the lead, Meyer said.
Steel is more expensive and less dense than lead. Some hunters had to adjust their shooting to compensate for steel shot hitting a target faster and with less force. Meyer said they had to move in closer to their prey and fire sooner than they had in the past.
"You'd be firing after the bird had passed," Meyer said.
Kent Van Horn, a Wisconsin state migratory bird ecologist, said ammunition manufacturers have used technology and their knowledge about metals to develop alternative shot.
"They are trying with different (metal) combinations to mimic the effectiveness of lead. As long as (the federal government) has done the EIS (environmental impact statement) and they're not toxic, we're fine with it," Van Horn said.
Kelly Malloy, senior executive at ENVIRON-Metal, Inc. in Sweet Home, Ore., said her company has managed to produce nontoxic shot that is safe for waterfowl habitat and as effective as lead. The shot has the same or greater density of lead, which means it carries as much force as the old shot.
"You can still have the same kind of hunt as you did with lead," she said.
But to achieve that Malloy said the company uses more expensive metals such as tungsten imported from China. That means a shell filled with non-lead shot can average $1.80 a shell versus 24 cents for lead shells, she said.
ENVIRON-Metal's iron-tungsten-nickel alloy shot combination is among the four alternatives currently under review by the wildlife service. The agency has approved three other nonlead alternatives manufactured by the company.
