I expect bald eagles do die from lead ingestion of sinkers, jigs, etc. However, the raptor rehabilitators will tell you that scavenging unrecovered deer and ingesting bullet fragments from them is also an issue. I can't verify the source of the lead, but there are bald eagles that still sicken and die from lead poisoning. That being said, as noted above, the bald eagle population has increased remarkably, and eagles as a species certainly are not in trouble due to lead ingestion.
L. Brown, I wanted to provide a quick comment that bifurcates yoru statement. Eagles are not a species in this country, we have large fish hawks (Bald Eagles) Haliaeetus leucocephalus that may be suffering from lead toxicity for the reasons you suggest, but as we have all established, they are at record numbers. Bald Eagles are highly adaptive because they are scavenging, thieving, adaptive scoundrels of the sky. (this coming from a guy that likes raptors) Bald Eagles can adjust to most niches of our diverse ecosystem pretty handily.
The second eagle is a true eagle, the Golden Eagle (Aquila Chrysaetos). The Golden Eagle is not nearly as adaptable to changing ecosystems are loss of prey base. In fact, I believe the latest count I heard is that biologists are tracking some 45 Golden Eagles east of the Mississippi river that are "native". Obviously during migrations additional birds get pushed east but heavy forests and mottled habitat has never been quite good for Golden Eagles to thrive in huge numbers in the east. In the west, there are large numbers of golden eagles but they certainly due suffer from lead toxicity and loss of habitat just like all the plains raptors that rely on high quanitites of jack rabbits, prairie dogs, sage grouse and other prey that has natural and unnatural fluctuations in numbers. (due to nature and man)
If we wish to examine another species as an indicator in the Western USA, the California Condor currently has 135 known birds in the wild population. That's 135 birds total. Of that populace more than a dozen have died of lead toxicity. Of a recent study of 26 Condors they took blood samples from, 20 had extremely high lead levels.
Considering all the attention the Condor gets (due to the small numbers) and the intense study data biologists gather on the population, it is possible to extrapolate that other western raptors with the same feeding habits are likely to suffer similar results.
Do we notice a few % of a population in other raptors dying from lead? No, because we don't study the populations that closely in most cases. The western birds are susceptible and it all comes down to man being a measurable factor to some extent. To what long term effect and to what level this behavior still allows them to sustainably reproduce, we don't fully know yet. But sloppy lead use on unrecovered quarry gives all hunters a bad name.
