BUTTE — Wildlife officials are urging hunters who killed snow geese in the Butte and Dillon areas to wait to eat the meat because the birds might have landed in the contaminated water of an old open pit mine.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials are asking hunters to freeze the geese instead, until investigators can determine how the water affected the birds.
Tens of thousands of snow geese landed in the 700-acre Berkeley Pit in Butte during a snowstorm on Nov. 28. Mine officials have worked to haze the birds off the water and prevent others from landing at the Superfund site. Several thousand birds are believed to have died so far.
The pit holds an estimated 45 billion gallons of acidic, metal-laden water.