Lead poisoning from hunting ammunition kills hundreds of thousands of wild birds and mammals annually. Switching to non-lead alternatives virtually eliminates this welfare problem.
Lead poisoning from hunting ammunition causes suffering and death in non-target scavenging species at enormous scale. Condors, bald eagles, golden eagles, and other raptors that consume gut piles and carcasses from lead-shot game ingest lead fragments that cause progressive neurological damage, weakness, and ultimately death. The welfare impact is particularly severe in critically endangered species like the California condor, where lead poisoning reverses years of recovery work. The solution is well-established and commercially available: copper and other non-lead ammunition fragments less and performs equivalently for hunting purposes. The barrier is cost and cultural resistance rather than technical availability.