Wyoming’s Golden Eagles are Slipping — Scientists Say Lead Ammo is a Big Culprit

Wyoming should be a stronghold for golden eagles. It’s prime nesting country, a winter refuge, and a flyway for birds migrating from as far as Alaska and Canada. Yet in just two decades, researchers say roughly a third of the state’s resident golden eagles have vanished, Casper Star Tribune reports.

“We’re seeing roughly 30% of our population has declined in the past 20 years,” said ornithologist Bryan Bedrosian, a 24-year Wyoming bird biologist and conservation and research director at Teton Raptor Center.

He’s also the founder of Sporting Lead-Free, a fast-growing, hunter-led education effort.

“It’s something that we’re really closely keeping an eye out.”

Unlike bald eagles, which have roared back nationwide, golden eagles in the West are still struggling. Wyoming’s big open basins and cliffy country should be a boon; instead, the birds face a gauntlet of human-driven risks: electrocution, illegal shooting, vehicle strikes, wind turbines — and lead.

Lead exposure is the one Bedrosian confronts up close. Scavengers like eagles find gut piles or unrecovered game. When a lead-core bullet hits, it mushrooms and sheds near-invisible fragments. Those specks end up in offal — and sometimes in the meat we take home. Raptors are especially vulnerable; a sliver of lead as small as half a grain of rice can kill an eagle.

“We’ve watched them die from lead poisoning,” Bedrosian said.

The data are stark. Multi-state research has found chronic lead exposure in roughly half of tested eagles and acute exposure for a sizable share, varying by region and season. Demographic models suggest lead is an underestimated drag on populations. Fieldwork backs that up in Wyoming: a study published in The Journal of Wildlife Management tested whether swapping ammo could actually save birds. Biologists handed out free non-lead cartridges to 699 hunters across two seasons. Those hunters harvested pronghorn, deer and elk, representing about 7% of take in two hunt units. Post-season eagle surveys indicated that getting lead out of the field can offset expected fatalities — evidence that a voluntary switch can move the needle.

Bedrosian’s group leans into that message. Sporting Lead-Free is intentionally nonpolitical and hunter-to-hunter. Instead of pushing bans, it partners with state agencies and local organizations — now in Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Alaska and beyond — to demo alternatives, answer ballistics questions and put copper ammo in people’s hands. Ambassadors operate in more than two dozen states and into Canada.

The pitch is pragmatic. Hunters already accept that lead is toxic — we took it out of gas, paint and pipes. X-rays of ground venison from a Wyoming donation program turned up lead in about 18% of packages when animals were taken with lead bullets.

“It’s not going to send anyone to the hospital,” Bedrosian told the Game and Fish Commission, “but it’s there.”

Copper bullets, by contrast, hold together, penetrate deeply and don’t shed fragments. They’ve become easier to find and, in many calibers, similarly priced — especially when you factor in fewer wasted cuts and fewer worries about what’s in the grind.

None of this is to pretend lead is the only problem. Young eagles still starve in bad prey years, birds tangle with traffic, and turbine blades don’t care what’s listed under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. But ammo is one lever hunters can pull right now, without waiting on lawsuits or grid rebuilds. Bedrosian says that’s why his group is talking with state and federal leaders about adding lead-free ammunition distribution to official “compensatory mitigation” programs — alongside retrofitting power poles to reduce electrocutions — as a way for energy developers and others to offset incidental eagle deaths.

For a species built to ride thermals and rule big skies, the fixes are surprisingly grounded: a different box of cartridges, better carcass handling, a little more care on the landscape.

“We are a community of hunters and anglers working for the betterment of wildlife,” Bedrosian said.

If Wyoming wants to keep golden eagles as more than a silhouette on a distant ridge, he argues, switching away from lead is one of the simplest, most effective places to start.