By Laura
Geggel, Senior Writer | June 22, 2018 09:23am ET
Wildlife
experts have partially solved a murder mystery regarding the deaths of 13 bald
eagles, but they still don't know who did it.
The 13
eagles — including some so young, they hadn't yet grown their iconic white head
feathers — were poisoned with a deadly pesticide known as carbofuran, according
to a six-month investigation first reported
by Maryland radio station WNAV.
Carbofuran
is highly toxic — just one granule of it can kill a small bird, according
to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) banned the use of liquid carbofuran in food crops in 2009, but
many people still likely have aging containers of the pesticide in their sheds,
Karyn Bischoff, a toxicologist at Cornell University's Animal Health Diagnostic
Center, told
The Washington Post. [Photos:
Bald Eagles of the Mighty Mississippi]
The 13
dead bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)
were first discovered by a man looking for deer antlers on Maryland's eastern
shore in February 2016. After finding four of the dead birds, the man called
the Maryland Natural Resources Police, who later found nine more when they came
out to investigate the site in Federalsburg, The
Washington Post reported.
The bald
eagle is a federally protected bird, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
spent the following six months investigating the birds' deaths, interviewing
more than a dozen landowners and property managers near the scene of the crime.
But "there was no smoking gun," John LaCorte, a special agent with
the Fish and Wildlife Service, told The Washington Post. "It's very
frustrating."
Carbofuran
once killed up to 2 million birds each year, according to the EPA. The pellet
form of the pesticide, which looks like grain seeds, was banned in the
mid-1990s, when bald eagles were still on the endangered
species list.
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