Golden eagles face significant mortality from power line electrocution and lead poisoning from spent ammunition. Both are preventable sources of welfare harm and population decline.
Golden eagle welfare from electrocution is acute and traumatic — birds contacting power poles with inadequate insulation or spacing receive high-voltage current causing burns, cardiac arrest, and death. Surviving birds with electrocution injuries often present to rehabilitators with severe wing burns requiring amputation. Lead poisoning causes a different pattern of welfare harm — neurological deterioration over days to weeks, causing loss of coordination, inability to feed, and painful progressive incapacitation before death. The tragedy of both threats is their complete preventability with existing technology and behavioral change. Power line retrofitting programs and non-lead ammunition adoption have dramatically reduced raptor electrocution and poisoning in areas where they have been implemented.