Lshotgun pellets kill. Big deal, you might say. Isn’t that their reason for being? Except that hunters’ shots don’t just kill their targets. They also poison the entire food chain. Here again, the observation is not new and the literature is abundant. In 1919, therefore more than a century ago, American researchers had already shown how lost ammunition that fell into ponds poisoned ducks and other wild aquatic birds that ingested them. More recently, the European Chemicals Agency estimated in 2018 that the 30,000 to 40,000 tonnes of lead dispersed each year in Europe by hunting and sport shooting represented a danger for many animal species, including humans.
However, we have struggled so far to quantify the damage. Or, to put it more optimistically, the benefits of replacing current ammunition with non-polluting projectiles. A team of British researchers has just taken care of it, not on all of the fauna, a Herculean task, but on twenty-two species of raptors. And the result, published Tuesday, March 15 in the journal Science of the Total Environmentappears striking: on average, the only change of projectiles would make it possible to increase by 6% the number of birds of prey in the European sky.
The choice of birds of prey is obviously not random. Some of these emblematic birds are scavengers, others do not hesitate to feed occasionally on animals that are dead or injured by pellets or bullets. In 2015, a study carried out in the Pyrenees thus attributed to the ingestion of pollutants, mainly pesticides and lead, no less than 24% of mortality in griffon vultures and red kites. “They are among the most protected species in Europe, so establishing the benefit of a change of ammunition in them is of obvious interest”underlines Rhys Green, professor of conservation science at the University of Cambridge and first author of the study.
A global scourge
The overall profit of 6% hides great disparities. In golden eagles, the population gain would be 13%, 12% for the griffon vulture, it would reach 14% in white-tailed eagles. “These species are particularly affected because they reproduce late, produce few young, live longcontinues the researcher. In addition, they feed, regularly or occasionally, on the carcasses of dead animals that hunters have not found, birds, ducks, rabbits, deer… But by attacking injured animals, non-scavenging raptors are also affected. » Thus, the population of goshawks could increase by 6%, those of peregrine falcons and marsh harriers by 3%. The gain for common buzzards would be more modest, 1.5%, but this would still represent 22,000 individuals, the researchers point out.
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