{"id":821558,"date":"2026-11-02T08:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T08:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/821558\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T08:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T08:46:09","slug":"human-swan-sacha-dench-warns-of-toxic-lead-ammunition-danger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/821558\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Human swan&#8217; Sacha Dench warns of toxic lead ammunition danger"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dench said: &#8220;Up to 100,000 water birds in the UK are expected to die each year from lead poisoning, and that&#8217;s maybe a million across Europe.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s a really big effect and enough to be pushing some species towards extinction.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Scientists and conservation groups have long warned lead shotgun pellets can contaminate habitats and harm wildlife after being deposited in the environment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dench said many people were unaware of the scale of the problem.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Every time you shoot a cartridge there can be up to 300 small pellets of lead that are spread into nature,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Overall in the UK every year that amounts to somewhere between 7,000 and 13,000 tonnes of lead being spread into nature.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Birds, particularly water birds, will mistake it for food or grit and eat it, and that is ground down in their stomachs. That&#8217;s how they become lead poisoned.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dench said: &#8220;Up to 100,000 water birds in the UK are expected to die each year from lead&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-821558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}