Condor Comeback by Sy Montgomery

Author:Sy Montgomery
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780358330660
Publisher: HMH Books
Published: 2020-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

Loons like this one are among the more than 130 species of animals vulnerable to lead’s poisonous effects.

At the Loon Center, Mark conducted a quick blood test of the sick loon. The lead levels “were off the charts,” he said. The only hope was to surgically remove any lead objects and medicate the bird to cleanse its blood at the sophisticated bird rehabilitation center Avian Haven—a three-hour drive north, into Maine. So LPC staff wrapped the loon in a towel, put it in a cardboard box, and with the bird in his car, Mark started driving as fast as he legally could. As he drove, every once in a while he would hear the sound of the sick loon’s beak pecking weakly at the cardboard.

Then the pecking stopped.

An x-ray of the loon’s body revealed the culprit: a lead fishing jig showed up clearly on the film. But by then it was too late. The loon had died on the way to the bird hospital.

In her earlier work, Myra demonstrated that lead paint peeling off old US military buildings on Midway Atoll in the Pacific Ocean was killing baby Laysan albatrosses—and her data got the government to clean up its act!

That’s why the next step is essential. Myra shows us the Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer—ICPMS for short. It’s the size of two large freezers and has big hoses snaking out of it.

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