Illegal shooting along power lines a leading cause of death for bald eagles | Hacker News Reader

Illegal shooting along power lines a leading cause of death for bald eagles

usgs.gov

95 pointsgeox74 comments

Reading the article makes this headline look pretty sensationalized.

- This is from studying only dead birds found near power lines in Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and Oregon.

- That is "birds" in general, only some of which were bald eagles.

- Out of 410 dead birds, cause of death was determined for 175. 66% gunshot, 17% electrocution, 17% collision. Of the 410, that's 28%/7%/7%.

So "Illegal shooting along power lines a leading cause of death for bald eagles" is an indefensible summary for several separate reasons.

„There were 235 birds for which body condition was so poor or evidence so inconclusive that a COD could not be determined. These included species not typically associated with power poles, some of which likely represented prey remains left by predatory birds feeding on the pole.“, from the actual study.

I have a weakness in that I always give people the benefit of the doubt. So I suspect that people are shooting these birds “for sport,” not realizing they are protected birds. I wonder if posting more signage to educate shooters that there are bald/golden eagles or whatever in the area, if that would help mitigate this at all. Maybe I’m too optimistic.

I have a weakness in that I always give people the benefit of the doubt

I had that too. Grow out of it. 30-35% of people are assholes.

I think sociopathy is a spectrum and at least 10% of humans are members

All birds of prey and migratory birds are protected under federal law and I've never met anyone plinking at birds that didn't already know it was illegal.

Why would you shoot any bird sitting on a utility pole, protected or not? There’s no sport in that.

The hunting urge runs deep. I've felt it.

The urge to hunt? Are you kidding? Plinking a bird off a pole is about as close to hunting as playing go fish is to catching dinner.

What you are describing is sadism and/or mental illness.

That’s not hunting. It’s target practice.

Our ancestors who evolved to hunt did not "play fair", they killed animals any way they possibly could. Running them off cliffs, into pits, setting fire to the forest to burn them alive. Might as well say guns and knives aren't hunting, that you have to use your bare feet and hands and that's it.

Our ancestors, although containing the equivalent or even greater intelligence as us, were unlikely to consider morality or ethics when it came to survival.

And neither does the evolutionary drive to kill animals consider those things.

Both comments above sounding much like Victorian era post Darwinian drawing room expressions of "Nature red in tooth and claw" and other aphorisms not sourced to either Darwin or Wallace, all running contrary to the actual considerations of actual hunter and gathers (Pintupi Nine, San Bushmen, etc) who repeatedly stress the importance of not killing off your food supply by over taxing breeding and regrowth abilities.

I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to regarding my comment, which was effectively addressing the non-comparative examples of hunter-gatherers killing for pure survival versus modern humans killing out of annoyance or so-called sport, where food is just around the corner, except in extreme cases of poverty and such.

It's also not clear whether the last bit of your comment is entirely accurate. Is there not plenty of evidence of ancient humans overhunting fauna? That was my understanding and a quick search seems to verify that.

No, a lot of animals kill for fun (not just "pure survival"), including early humans, some apes, and quite probably our common ancestors.

No to what? I didn't state that ancient humans only ever killed for pure survival, although it likely consisted of the vast majority, aside from warfare.

No to the notion that it was a "non-comparative example" of hunter-gatherers killing for pure survival.

Our ancestors didn’t have grocery stores…

Ah, the deep-seated caveman urge to hunt down utility poles, shoot the electricity out of your neighbors, I mean, enemies, and hear the lament of their melted ice cream ...

grouse are tasty, but hitting utility equipment can be quite expensive.

If someone has no idea what they are shooting at then maybe they shouldn’t be wielding a weapon at all?

Shooting road signs is illegal. Go to any rural area and count the bullet holes in any road sign with a deer on it.

Where I used to live, when we took a road trip, we always looked forward to passing the sign where some joker had stuck a round red reflector to the nose of a prancing deer road sign.

Used to live by an area with a 'caution falling cows'[1] sign. Was never there longer than a few hours before being stolen again. Sure, you can buy them, but I guess it's not the same?

Never did see it more than a handful of times over many trips/years.

[1] https://www.roadtrafficsigns.com/caution-falling-cows-funny-...

There is a freight train grade crossing nearby, and there is an official sign which reads "NO TRAIN HORN" and then below it, there is very meticulous lettering reading "EXCEPT SOMETIMES" and I swear I have never quite figured out whether it is official, or some joker's joke that's been permitted to stay there for years on end.

Pretty much all birds in the US have been protected for over a century.

Many of them since 72 anyway. [1] The birds I've had challenges with are Magpies. They kill the Finches including one breed that is the state bird Western Meadowlark that I feed but I found that if I can lure some Crows here they scare off the Magpies. I wish I knew how to keep the Crows around all the time. It's fun listening to them talk to one another. Farmers used to get paid to turn in Magpies but now they are under federal protection.

[1] - https://www.audubon.org/news/the-history-and-evolution-migra...

That has nothing to do with education... Education is in an egregiously pitiful state at this time. Why would you expect people to even know birds are protected when a quarter the country can't read and another quarter can barely do so?

Just as likely someone's shot at them due to killing chickens or something. Not that it makes it right. We had a neighbor back home get a huge fine for shooting at black vultures after they'd killed several calves one year (unlike turkey vultures, black vultures will kill, rather than just eating carrion).

How is shooting animals for sport any better then shooting them because they are a nuisance? Sounds way worse to me actually.

Doesn't pass the smell test at all. Over 50% they can't determine a cause of death. But gunshots is certainly going to be one of the easiest to determine. It's highly unlikely a bird killed by gunshot is going to be in the undetermined cause of death group.

Depends on what it's shot with. A large caliber rifle is obviously going to leave some damage. One or two pellets from a shotgun aren't going to be obvious in a half decomposed bird.

I doubt anyone is shooting birds on power lines with a rifle. I mean maaaybe, most likely they hit the bird and some pellets get lodged in. They will get stuck in those large birds for sure. I wouldn't doubt the birds are being shot elsewhere and then just return to the power line and either die from the gunshot or a collision because of difficulty flying.

They're X-raying them. Metal shows up great in an X-ray.

Shotgun pellet will pass through flesh.

Source: animals (not endangered!) that I've shot and eaten.

of course it will thats the whole point, but this not 100% The case. tell me what you think about:

https://d9-wret.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/...

As another comment pointed out, Bald Eagles are no longer endangered either. Still protected, since they are the national bird, but not endangered.

Not 100%, it depends on distance and size. I've dressed game and found shotgun pellets plenty of times.

Everyone loves the extra crunchy piece of rabbit.

[delayed]

this is addressed in the article, and even if you halve the deaths from gunshot its an incredibly high and concerning number.

some people have no recourse and just blast anything they can.

others see wildlife as competition for commercial harvest, or predators of live stock.

we have a major investigation, in alaska regarding a large number of sealions shot, presumed to be fishery harvesters acting upon what they believe to be the cause of declining fish population.

> they believe to be the cause of declining fish population.

Yes a few dozen animals are the reason there are less fish, not the trawlers collecting literal tons of fish nor the degrading enviroment. Some peoples attitude to the world around them is just confusing

most of these people don't have more than an "n=1 statistical concept" level of understanding of reality.

When they finally catch the killers they should be removed from polite society for at least a couple of decades and their face plastered as to what happens when you think you're a cool guy shooting endangered animals.

We don't even do that to people that shoot other people in a lot of cases.

Bald eagles are not even close to endangered.

The point is to isolate people who kill animals for fun, not out of necessity.

The solution:

"Caution - Some eagles in this area are drones that shoot back."

Murder isn't a solution.

Only around 25% of gunshots are fatal to humans

Drone shootings I think are likely more fatal. Ask Obama et al. Government isn't above illegally murdering Americans from the sky with sky robots.

Please send these fake eagles to Ukrainian Army, they will use them.

So far, neither side in that war admits to using bird drones. But they are available. [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D0CMlyCgtc

Ask any politician, and they will claim that birds are real. But a select few of us know the truth about birds. Don't be deceived.

These animals are considered "Least Concern"[0]. They are nuisances in many parts of North America[1], and nothing can be done to control their populations because they are the national bird of the United States.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bald_eagle

[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/explore-...

You could effectively replace animals or bald eagles with humans in your sentiment without any reduction of truth. Does the implied feeling remain?

Empathy is required when dealing with animals that are learning, in various ways, how to survive in the world that we have reshaped for them. It shouldn't be a surprise that some of the ways are not purely symbiotic.

An argument about empathy isn't particularly powerful, unless the receiver already shares your intuitions. It appeals to people who already agree with you.

We don't want to lose bio-diversity. We don't have a way to un-extinct a species yet, so we need to be very careful until there's an undo button. Eagles play an important role in their ecosystem, and it would be bad for us if they went extinct.

We also don't want people to be attacked by animals, especially when they would be skirting legal trouble for reasonably defending themselves against those animals. An individual human does more for you and I than an individual eagle, and the value judgement there is quite clear.

There's an optimal amount of eagles, taking into account all the concerns about ecosystem health, and the well being of people. For this particular species of eagle, at this particular point in time, we are probably wrong in the direction of too-many-eagles, than in the direction of too-few-eagles.

These are good points, but I think it highlights the larger issue in how humans meddle with nature and attempt to be its curator. We'll rarely get it right because nature is a system we don't understand, and we harmed it indiscriminately and then have tried to retrofit nature on top of our constructions.

yeah, that's probably why people are shooting them off power lines.

Why are they a nuisance? The only thing I can think of is that they might hunt someone’s backyard chickens. Otherwise they control rodent, rabbit and snake populations and mostly really just eat a lot of fish.

https://story.californiasunday.com/dirty-birds

Reading this makes it sound like that, since almost nobody lives there half the year, the eagles think its a place to call home. This island is so remote it should almost just be left to the wild.

I think the article is a bit too sensationalist, and that's detrmental to the point.

410 birds in the study, 115 were shot. That's not "most", but seriously WTF? That's still a lot. I would have guessed zero.

The article states that they were able to determine the cause of death for 175 of the birds and of those birds 115 (66%) had been shot.

Isn't that what I said?

I wonder if it's likely that one person or a group of people are responsible for killing all these birds. It seems very specific and intentional to me. As if someone has some problem with these eagles. If you're close enough to shoot the bird from a shotgun (with bird shot) you're close enough to be able to tell a difference between a bald eagle and a crow.

It makes no sense to me unless the person/people specifically went there to target eagles.

Do people there often have chickens outside? Perhaps it is some sort of revenge for killing chickens?

Study, open access: „Illegal shooting is now a leading cause of death of birds along power lines in the western USA“, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258900422...

What I really want to know is, who's shooting eagles near wind turbines?

https://www.eagles.org/take-action/wind-turbine-fatalities/

Don't look up how many fish die from coal and nuclear power plants.

What does that have to do with his point of birds killed by wind turbines? Or did you just feel like your favored energy source and ideology was attacked and decided to shift the debate to grounds you think you could win?

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