Hospitalization of eagles has been on the rise in Virginia due to a variety of dangers. Here’s what you need to know.
An increasing number of eagles have been hospitalized in Virginia over the last year. WVTF reported that 73 eagles were brought into the Wildlife Center of Virginia (three were admitted in October 2025 alone), with a majority of those experiencing the side effects of lead poisoning. A spokesman for the veterinary center, Connor Gillespie, told the outlet that it’s a persistent issue. “It’s such a pervasive problem that about 3 out of 4 eagles we admit have some level of lead in their system, and no level of lead is safe. Even a small amount, something that’s the size of a grain of rice, if they ingest it, that’s potentially fatal for them.”
What seems to be causing this influx of poisonings? The accidental ingestion of lead ammunition. “Right now, it’s hunting season, and if hunters use lead ammunition to shoot deer for example, on impact it fragments into hundreds of tiny pieces,” Gillespie said. He added, “If the hunters then dress that animal in the field and leave any parts there – like often they’ll leave a gut pile, an animal like a bald eagle that’s a scavenger can come along and think that’s a great meal, and they don’t know they’re ingesting that lead in the process.”
The Wildlife Center is hoping to appeal to hunters directly by educating them on the negative side effects of using lead ammunition and by prompting them to use safer alternatives. They’re also attempting to work with landfill operators to ask them to properly bury any animals euthanized with pentobarbital, which also contributes to eagles getting sick and/or dying across the state.
Other issues, like collisions and barbiturate poisoning, are contributing to increased hospitalizations
In addition to a staggering number of eagles being hospitalized for lead poisoning, several other problems plague this endangered bird. Traffic collisions often prove to be equally deadly. As Connor Gillespie explained to WVTF, “They [the eagles] like to be perched somewhere where there’s a wide-open area they can view, like a field for example, and any time a mouse or a rabbit or something scurries out, they can swoop down and catch it quite easily. Unfortunately, to them roads are that same purpose. It’s a wide- open area, and if they swoop down at the wrong time when a car is coming, they get hit.”
One of the most surprising contributors to eagle hospitalizations, though, is barbiturate poisoning. A veterinary research fellow at the Wildlife Center of Virginia, Dr. Olivia Schiermeyer, said that eagles sometimes eat the carcasses of farm animals or pets that have been euthanized and legally disposed of in landfills. Landfill owners should bury the animals under the ground to prevent this from happening, but they don’t always abide by that rule of thumb. “Pentobarbital is the drug that we use to euthanize animals, and it causes significant depression of the central nervous system. It decreases their [the eagles] respiratory rate and their heart rate,” Schiermeyer said. “We’ve had several this year come in in varying states of sedation from pentobarbital toxicity.”
The Department of Wildlife Resources is seeking the public’s assistance
The Department of Wildlife Resources is joining the Wildlife Center of Virginia’s request in asking the public to work together to prevent further illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths of the state’s eagles. The DWR said in October 2025, “If the public finds dead wild upland game birds, avian scavengers (crows, raptors, owls, etc) or find 5 or more dead waterfowl, shorebirds, or seabirds in the same area [within] 1-2 days, please notify the Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR) at 855-571-9003.”
