PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • May 7, 2025
I can’t think of a study more important to hunters and wildlife advocates than the one proposed by LD 1364, a bill to “Authorize a Study on the Impacts and Risks of Lead-based Ammunition.” I’ve been doing the same study for decades with my friends Dan Ashe — former U.S. Fish and Wildlife director — and Elaine Leslie, former chief of the National Park Service’s Biological Resources Division. Ashe issued a rule (overturned by Trump 45) that would have banned lead ammunition on all 567 national wildlife refuges and 38 wetland management units. Leslie drafted an order to ban lead ammunition from national park units open to hunting. Her superiors never rescinded it but never implemented it. Lead poisoning symptoms include anemia, memory loss, depression, convulsions, brain damage, stillbirth, paralysis, kidney and liver failure. I won’t forget the day when Mark Pokras of Tufts University’s Wildlife Clinic opened a giant freezer and two dozen stiff bald eagles tumbled out around my feet. Most were from Maine, and most had been poisoned by consuming lead bullet fragments. ~ Ted Williams