In support of the New York State Lead Ammunition Working Group, Dr. Andreas Eleftheriou completed a project that identified wildlife scavengers of white-tailed deer in New York. The project’s goal was to catalog scavenger species and assess their risk of lead exposure through ammunition fragments in deer remains.
From community members, we received 160 images from 35 game cameras in mid-NY and documented 17 bird and 14 mammal scavenger species. These results demonstrate multiple species at risk, with bald eagles and crows representing the best species to function as bioindicators.