Lead Ammo Harms Wildlife and Undermines the Mission of Our National Parks

Earlier this month, a California condor, the first of its kind to hatch and take flight in Zion National Park, died of lead poisoning just shy of its fifth birthday. Shockingly, one of this condor’s siblings was earlier found to have the highest recorded lead value ever documented in a live bird over the entire 28-year history of the condor release program.

Lead poisoning remains the leading cause of diagnosed death among California condors. About 90% of condors trapped and tested during this past year had blood lead levels indicating lead exposure. As scavengers, condors ingest lead shot from carcasses of animals killed with lead-based ammunition.

But condors are not the only victims. Lead is a leading threat to all national park birdlife, especially bald eagles, hawks, and other raptors. Lead fragments from spent shells contaminate the entire wildlife food chain.

It’s time for decisive action to protect the wildlife that our national parks were created to preserve.

While most parks by law do not permit hunting, a significant number do. Of the 429 national parks, 76 allow various types of hunting—recreational, subsistence, or tribal hunting. These parks (the largest of which are in Alaska) cover more than 60% of land within the entire national park system. In addition, more than 85% of parks with fish (213 in all) are open for fishing with lead tackle.

The impact is devastating. More than 130 park wildlife species are exposed to or killed by ingesting lead or prey contaminated with lead.

These wildlife deaths are preventable. Since November of 2022, Interior Secretary Deborah Haaland, the cabinet officer overseeing the National Park Service, has had a proposed rule sitting on her desk that would end the use of lead-based ammunition and fishing tackle in all park units. Despite this, no action has been taken on this rule-making petition.

In contrast to the Park Service’s total inaction, its sister agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, (FWS) has declared that “lead ammunition and tackle have negative impacts on both wildlife and human health.” The FWS has taken the first tentative steps to reduce or eliminate the use of lead ammunition by:

• Imposing partial bans on lead ammunition in certain refuges where new hunting opportunities have opened up;

• Phasing out of lead ammunition on three refuges newly opened to hunting; and

• Developing a pilot program to reimburse hunters for using lead-free ammunition.

Though these steps do not constitute a complete ban on lead ammunition, they represent a significant step forward, especially considering that nearly 80% of wildlife refuges and other management districts offer hunting and fishing access.

Unfortunately, wildlife protection does not appear to be a high priority for National Park Service Director Chuck Sams and his leadership team. Earlier this year, he approved questionable hunting practices, such as killing bear cubs and wolf pups in their dens, using dogs and artificial lights to hunt black bears, and shooting swimming caribou from motorboats across more than 22 million acres of Park Service administered lands in Alaska.

These are not the actions of a conservation-focused agency.

Banning lead from our national parks would be one of the single biggest conservation advances in a generation. Such a move would place the Park Service alongside 26 states and countries that have already banned lead ammunition.

The ecological stakes are profound. It’s time for decisive action to protect the wildlife that our national parks were created to preserve.