Closed petition Immediately ban the use of toxic lead in all ammunition in Wales... lead is killing our wildlife!
Lead is a toxic metal and a very strong poison yet more than 6,000 tonnes are fired at game birds each year in the UK. If any citizen deliberately dumped thousands of tonnes of poison into the Welsh countryside they would rightly find themselves facing prosecution in a Court of Law!
Birds often mistake tiny shot pellets for grit or seeds, and ingest them, and so suffer painful deaths. Dying birds are usually taken quickly by predators - making their deaths unseen and invisible to the public.
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Most ammunition -bullets, shotgun pellets and airgun pellets have traditionally been made with lead.
Lead affects most body systems in animals, including the nervous and circulatory systems, and low levels of exposure can affect a birds immune system and behaviour. In some circumstances , swallowing even a single lead pellet can kill a bird.
A consortium of shooting organisations now support a switch to ammunition that is free of lead by everyone taking live quarry with shotguns in the next five years.
We welcome this recognition of the damage lead is doing to our environment but believe the ecological emergency demands that we impose an immediate ban on lead ammunition of all kinds. We also believe that the ban must include clay shoots and not just "live quarry" as the wasted lead shot still ends up in the environment.
Barry Action is a small volunteer conservation group based in the South Wales coastal town of Barry.
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