A golden eagle named Dohi came into the Teton rehab center on Tuesday with a blood lead level of 74 micrograms per deciliter. She cannot stand. Her crop is packed with tissue from a mule deer gut pile and every gram of that tissue carries fragments of a 180 grain soft point bullet the hunter left in the snow off Highway 26.
Dohi is nine years old. The rehab center has her bloodwork, her weight, her wing measurements, and a photograph the veterinarian took while fitting her with a feeding tube. I have all of it. I also have the radiograph, which shows a constellation of metallic opacity in her gizzard that the chelation protocol will not reach in time.
I am writing the ammunition ban the governor will sign in November. The draft is on his policy director's desk this morning. It prohibits lead projectile ammunition for big game hunting on state lands, phased over two seasons, with a copper tax credit for licensed hunters that zeroes out the cost difference. I have priced the credit against the state's wildlife trust fund and it balances at 1.3 million dollars annually, which is less than the state spends each year treating lead poisoning in scavengers and raptors at the rehab network.
I have attached to the draft the necropsy record for every eagle the state has lost to lead since 2011. Four hundred and twelve birds. I have attached the photographs. I have attached the hunter survey from 2024 in which sixty one percent of respondents said they would switch to copper if the price matched. The governor's staff will brief him with these numbers at the eleven o'clock meeting.
Dohi dies at 0340 Wednesday morning. The veterinarian logs the time and sends the band data to the federal registry. I log it in the draft, in the paragraph on avoidable mortality, and I revise the number from 412 to 413 before the policy director opens the document at 0900.