Getting back to eagles . . . I doubt that eagles dying from lead poisoning has anything approaching a significant impact on the population. The problem exists because rehabilitators find sick eagles, and find that they have ingested lead from gut piles, road killed deer that may have been wounded by hunters but unrecovered, etc. All followed by a hue and cry. But as I said earlier, the sick eagles will get publicity because they have a fan club. Crows, vultures, etc don't really have a fan club. And as someone else noted, we learned a long time ago that covids in particular (crows and jays) are very susceptible to West Nile Virus. That's very likely their leading cause of death.

Re cougars, one thing that isn't very likely to happen with them in Iowa or Nebraska: They're not very likely to be protected. Farmers would go nuts. So we'll continue to read about the occasional cat shot in Nebraska, or even less frequently shot in Iowa. And pretty much everyone except the really radical animal rights types will likely be OK with that.

Last edited by L. Brown; 03/20/24 06:30 AM.