The Dungeness Recreation Area (DRA) is a Clallam County Park adjacent to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge. The Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife (WDFW) regulates hunting in the DRA.

Lead has been unquestionably identified as a toxic substance to humans and wildlife. It was removed from auto fuel in the 1980’s and has all but been eliminated from paint and other home use products. It especially damages the health of children. It also causes numerous documented deaths in birds. The species most vulnerable include raptors and grazing waterfowl: swans, geese, and dabbling ducks. Raptors ingest lead when they feed on grazing seedeaters and waterfowl or birds wounded and left in hunting regions.

The USFWS began eliminating lead shot for hunting on federal refuges in 1985 and completely banned its use for migratory waterfowl nationwide by the 1990’s. In 1998, together with biologists from WDFW, OPAS asked the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission to ban the use of lead or toxic shot for hunting in the DRA. Duck hunters had stopped using lead in 1991, but pheasant hunters continued to use it. The duck and pheasant hunting areas overlap. The Commission asked that data be collected to determine the existence and quantity of lead in the DRA soils.

In the fall of 1999, WDFW took approximately 180 soil samples in the hunting areas of DRA. OPAS volunteers worked over 850 hours during the winter of ’99-’00 to process these samples by washing the soil through screens to locate residual hunting pellets. This cold, wet, dirty work alongside WDFW biologists took many months. The state lab processing of the hunting pellets revealed lead in excess of the amounts that were considered harmful. In 2000, the Fish and Wildlife Commission banned lead and toxic shot use for the DRA and several other areas in the state. Compliance was approximately 75% the first hunting season and has become increasingly better to where it is estimated at 95% now. However, lead continues to be used in numerous state and private lands used for hunting upland game and small mammals.

During the 2006 state legislative session, the house and senate passed a bill that will penalize persons who violate rules concerning the use of nontoxic shot on waterfowl within Washington state, so things are improving when it comes to protecting wildlife from ingesting lead shot while foraging.