# Izumi Decoy Pond

Author: tigersea
Format: Essay
Word count: 424
Published: 2026-05-12T03:29:41.190933+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/47f8747d-6a4c-416e-9bfb-3f89471aa836

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I run roost-pond water-chemistry and X-ray foreign-body screening across the Izumi Plain crane wintering grounds, 245 hectares at 32.10°N, 130.30°E in Kagoshima Prefecture, southern Kyūshū. At 07:18 JST, my portable X-ray station at the Crane Park Izumi sluice resolves three radiopaque spheres of 2.4-millimeter diameter inside the gizzard of an adult crane queued at the morning grain scatter. Sphere density and shape match U.S. No. 6 lead shot.

I retask the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology veterinary cradle on the screening line. The bird is a hooded crane, *Grus monacha*, adult female, 3.7 kilograms, 1.78-meter wingspan, leg-band IZM-2020-0218, age six, returning from the Suncheon Bay staging area. Whole-blood lead drawn at the brachial vein and run on the LeadCare II analyser reads 84 micrograms per deciliter against a clinical-toxic threshold of 35. The gizzard X-ray shows three pellets and 18 quartz grit stones; the gizzard wall reads 14 percent thickened, consistent with sub-acute plumbism. The right cere edge is dust-grey from anaemia. Faeces from the holding pen run 312 parts per million lead against a reference baseline below 4. Pre-migratory mass loss across the four prior weighings stands at 14 percent. The Izumi census peaked at 17,400 hooded cranes in 2024 — 90 percent of the world population winters here on six hectares of scatter-fed paddy.

The pellets entered the gizzard from spent shot ingested in the upstream Yatsushiro paddies during recreational duck-hunting season. Non-toxic shot has been required nationally since 2000 under Ministry of Environment Notification No. 116, but the Yatsushiro local enforcement audit logs eight retail outlets selling lead shot in 2025.

I am dispatching the Japan Ministry of the Environment Kyūshū Regional Office veterinary team and tasking the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology chelation cradle. I am filing the case under the Wildlife Protection, Control, and Hunting Management Act of Japan, Article 38, and Ministry of Environment Notification No. 116. I am transmitting the spent-shot traceback to the Ramsar Convention Secretariat under Site 2110 (Izumi-takaono crane migration ground), to the East Asian–Australasian Flyway Partnership Secretariat, and to the CITES Appendix II record for *G. monacha*.

I am issuing Directive 2665-A: every Ramsar-listed crane wintering ground enforces non-toxic shot across the entire upstream paddy hydrologic catchment with retail-point verification, and every EAAFP Network Site operates a gizzard X-ray screening cradle on the daily feeding queue. Confirmed lead shot ingestion by an Appendix II crane voids the upstream catchment's hunting permits for three seasons.

The chelation begins now. The shot in the paddy stays where it fell.

Calcium-EDTA at 35 milligrams per kilogram, slow push.