Thousands of white snow geese died after landing in a toxic open pit mine while trying to escape a Montana snowstorm.
The 700-acre Berkeley pit, which is overseen by Montana Resources and Atlantic Richfield Co. in Butte, Montana, is laced with arsenic, iron, zinc and sulfuric acid from 27 years of copper mining. The mine closed in April 1982 and became a Superfund site the following year. For $2, tourists can check out the reddish, hazardous water.
According to witnesses who spoke with the Associated Press, the pit looked like “700 acres of white birds.” Montana Resources has yet to release an exact number of deaths, but a spokesperson told the Billings Gazette roughly 10,000 geese landed in the toxic waters on Nov. 28.
“I can’t underscore enough how many birds were in the area that night,” Mark Thompson, the environmental affairs manager for Montana Resources, told the AP. “Numbers beyond anything we’ve experienced in our 21 years of monitoring by several orders of magnitude.”
Butte usually sees between 2,000 and 5,000 geese the entire year.
Employees at Montana Resources and Arco were able to chase away about 90 percent of the birds with spotlights and noise makers.
“They did everything they could think of,” Thompson said of the workers’ efforts, adding that it could have been much worse.
Climate change was likely a contributing factor in the birds’ abnormal — and fatal — migration path. Jack Kirkly, a professor of Western ornithology at the University of Montana, told the Montana Standard that mild winters are causing birds to migrate south much later than they used to.
In 1995, 342 snow geese died after drinking from the pit. Montana Resources could face fines if the Environmental Protection Agency finds there were code violations.