Wildlife, human and environmental costs of using leadammunition: An economic review and analysis

摘要

A proposed European Union (EU)-widerestriction on the use of lead gunshot for shooting in andover wetlands estimated that the societal benefits of arestriction outweighed costs, despite few identified benefitsbeing quantified economically. A subsequent Annex XVInvestigation Report on the evidence of impacts of leadammunition in terrestrial environments concluded thatadditional measures to control its use are warranted,although to date this has not been further evaluated. Tohelp inform this process, we review the literature andundertake new analyses to estimate the costs of continueduse of lead ammunition associated with impacts onwildlife, people and the environment. We estimateminimum annual direct costs across the EU and Europeof c. €383 million–€960 million and €444 million–€1.3thousand million respectively. The value that societyplaces on being able to avoid these losses, estimatedusing a ‘willingness to pay’ approach, was c. €2.2 thousandmillion for wildfowl alone. Our estimated costs of thecontinued use of lead ammunition across the EU appear tobe considerably greater than the likely costs of switching tonon-toxic alternative ammunition types, although thesehave not been formally estimated in full.