Several thousand coke goose have been found dead after taking a pit stop on a Montana mine contaminated with high-pitched degree of back breaker and dense metals .
The sight of dead snow goose were spot early last workweek in the desert Berkeley Pit mine of Butte , Montana . The nearby area has also been scattered withcarcasses around parking lots and roadsides . Using dawdler , telescopes , and multitude on foot , functionary began counting up the death cost last week , which could be upwards of 10,000 snow geese , local newsBillings Gazettereports .
Mark Thompson , environmental thing managing director for mine company Montana Resources , told theAssociated Pressthat the scene was like “ 700 Akka of white bird . ”
The geese were migrate down from the Arctic through the Central Flyway , abird migrationroute that baffle over the Great Plains in the US.When they stopped for a break in Montana on this marathon journeying , many of the lakes and ponds they ordinarily pluck where frozen over , most likely because the thaw temperatures of their Arctic habitat allowed them to stay afterwards into the season than common . So the flock headed to a nearby H2O soundbox place in an abandoned mine , where they drink in and floated in its toxic effluent , which is high in sulfuric superman and foul with toilsome metals .
The Berkeley Pit mine of Butte , Montana in 2004 . Rob Crandall / Shutterstock .
The Environmental Protection Agency say that fines could be dished out towards the mine company for neglect .
The toxic waters of the mine have been a hot spot for migrating geese before and each class the unexpended stagnant goose is found floating in the waters . Twenty - one yr ago , 342 geese were find floating in there . postmortem examination of these geese show that they had super high levels of heavy metals in their kidneys .
Since then , the area has employed numerous techniques to ward off the twat , such as public eye and dissonance Jehovah . However , just by filmy book , this year ’s C. P. Snow geese sojourn appears to have overwhelmed them .
“ I ca n’t underscore enough how many bird were in the Butte area that night , ” Thompson bring . “ Numbers beyond anything we ’ve ever experienced in our 21 years of monitoring by several edict of magnitude . ”
