Swan Lead Poisoning

[Jeff (AKA Cheeky Monkey, Spud, Jay Dubya, Woody .]

Got to support your argument there Budgie.

I bitterly complained once to the Beeb about a piece in an RSPCA promo/documentary which accused a swan of being poisoned with "angler's lead shot". I actually phoned the RSPCA animal sanctuary and found the bird had been taken to Swan Rescue at Egham where it was rested and then released - NO lead poisoning.

Is it still possible? Maybe, but there is the rgreater chance that it is shotgun shot and loaded with antimony, and even more poisonous element! In OLD days, swans examined that had died of lead poisoning were found to have several pieces of split lead in them around the BB, AAA, and SSG sizes. I would have thought there was a greater chance of me winning the Lotto nowadays.

 

[Andy "the Dog" Nellist (SAA) (ACA)]

We put our house in order nearly two decades ago and should be making that point very clearly to the BBC.

There is clearly a problem worldwide with birds ingesting lead usually lead shot being used for shooting.

http://www.trumpeterswansociety.org/washington/lead.htm

Strangely the RSPB do not mention shot from shooting activities:

http://www.rspb.org.uk/birds/guide/m/muteswan/threats_to_swans.asp

 

[neil staton]

The BBC are very blatant biased liars although unrelated to fishing here is an example I witnesed first hand.

I happened to be in America 10 days before and 4 afterhurrican Katrina hit new orleans.

It was all you could get on TV 24/7. Absolute constant it was, and, on every one of the 15 million channels they have.

It was showing everything they were doing to prepare for it the booarding up the prep of the superdome thing and the army or home guard or whatever their called, they even shut the inbound side of the main highway and turned it to outbound, something like 12 lanes of cars leaving the city. It was like a full on NATO exercise.

I got back home afterwards to read on the BBC webby that 'America never warned them' and 'never tried to help them'.

The sunday sport is a more respected news agency than the BBC /forum/smilies/smile_smiley.gif

 

[The Monk]

what an absolute load of crap, anglers being stiched up, again because we are an easy target, the percentage of lead shot produced for the angling industries is extremely insignificant compaired to the shooting industries, its actually less than 1%, interestingly other industries also use lead. How many anglers do you know who disgard lead?? I`ve lost a few bits over the years, shootists fire the bloody stuff directly into the water to kill wildfowl and we get stitiched up for losing a few peices, it would be interesting to find out how much lead is actually in our waters and what type it is? sadly coarse anglers, us are an apathetic bunch and largely derivitives of the working classes, the great unwashed, (especially us carp anglers), not the type of people who are noted to organise ourselves and fight our corner, which makes us so easy targets of course. yes lets bring back the Spanish inquestion/forum/smilies/smile_smiley.gif, just out of interest, and I`m not a biologist merely an ecologists, but how do you test for lead poisoning and isolate it from other environmental posionings,I seem to remember reading something about theproblems associated with the tests??

 

[Fred Bonney]

Well fancy that, another Thread on lead and only 2 years old!!!!!!!

 

[Robert Woods]

I once saw an old aggressive single male swan stamp on young geese in a nest killing them whilst their parents stood by helpless.../forum/smilies/angry_smiley.gif.

 

[Paul H]

I think we should beware of humanising animals, anthropomorphism is an odd human characteristic.

If you believe that the swan decided to kill those geese out of spite then by the same logic you must also believe that fish and all other animals are capable of reasoned thought.

Nature is red in tooth and claw (and beak).