California activists call for lead ammunition ban to aid condors

[PinnedAndRecessed]

http://www.modbee.com/state_wire/story/9628753p-10513324c.html



SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - A coalition of environmentalists, American Indians and hunters is asking regulators to issue an emergency ban on lead ammunition in the condor's feeding territory and eventually statewide.
"This is imperative to get this going. We feel this is an emergency issue for the condor," said Jeff Miller, a researcher with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups filing the petition with the state Fish and Game Commission.

The move comes 18 months after state wildlife managers started a voluntary plan to protect California condors from lead poisoning. Separate studies for the state and federal wildlife agencies last year found condor lead poisoning increased during the fall hunting season.

A problem has been hunters who leave an estimated 30,000 unburied carcasses or entrails across the condor's range, which are eaten by the scavengers.

But state condor preservation officials said survival is at an all-time high. Also, hunting regulations aren't up for routine review until 2007, leaving it uncertain if they will consider the plea from the activists who say traditional ammunition is too toxic. The next commission meeting is in February.

"We were losing a half-dozen to a dozen a year either to death or having to bring them in (to captivity) for bad behavior or something," said Fish and Game Department biologist Ron Jurek, a member of the California Condor Recovery Team. But none has died in 14 months. "We've never had such good survival. Things are looking up now."

Part is due to better management of the condors, including keeping them away from carcasses killed with lead bullets, Jurek said. Most condors are tracked with radio collars, allowing managers to spot sick birds and recapture them for treatment. And veterinarians are better able to treat acute lead poisoning, as they are doing now with a condor in Arizona.

But as more condors are released and forage naturally over as much a 150-mile range, they'll encounter more lead-laced carcasses, said the environmental group's Miller. "We're going to see lead mortality go way up."

The wild condor population dropped to just 15 in 1984, but the population in California now tops 100. About 10 condors since 1995 have died or undergone intense treatment for lead poisoning in California, Jurek said.

Nonlead shotgun ammunition already is required nationwide for hunting waterfowl. But wildlife agencies in Arizona, Utah and California - which each have reintroduced populations of the giant bird - hope a voluntary program will work without requiring an outright ban on lead bullets.

 

[c_yeager]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - A coalition of environmentalists, American Indians and hunters is asking regulators to issue an emergency ban on lead ammunition in the condor's feeding territory and eventually statewide.

Thanks, they will never take your huntin' rifle.

:banghead:

 

[stevelyn]

We collectively predicted this (ammo bans and restrictions) happening for a long time now. Not surprisingly it's begining Kaliforniastan. Any hunter or gun owner going along with this deserves to lose their guns, hunting rights and what little freedom they have left. :banghead:

Sooner the condors die off the sooner folks can stop wringing their hands over their eventual demise. Dinosaurs and dodos are extinct. I don't miss them. I doubt I'd miss over-grown buzzards either.

 

[mete]

The California condor was endangered even when europeans first arrived. Maybe they should breed some brains into them so they don't eat lead or sit on power lines etc.

 

[Bigjake]

i think the birds would be just fine left alone, without any envirowacko aid from these morons. the sooner all the radical treehuggers go the way of the dino and dodo, the better

 

[Mannlicher]

just shoot the condors, and voila, no need for a lead ban. or is that to simple?

 

[Standing Wolf]

If it quacks like a condor, and walks like a condor, and...

Seriously: I doubt there's anything the leftist extremists in the People's Republic of California don't already regulate or want to regulate.

 

[boofus]

Sure, we'll let you ban lead bullets, we'll just use the steel and aluminum core ones instead... Whoops those are banned too because they are 'armor piercing'.

Proof positive that the gun grabbing crowd is out to ban EVERY gun, not just the mean evil military looking ones.

 

[Matt G]

Separate studies for the state and federal wildlife agencies last year found condor lead poisoning increased during the fall hunting season.

Okay. Let's see the numbers. Let's also see the numbers over the last 20 years. What's the increased toxicity? At what rate is the toxicity dangerous?
What are the species most consumed with lead pellets in them?

If it's a real issue, then I suppose we can start to look at increased use of non-toxic pellets in the hunting of the preferred species of the condor. If it's a real issue, they won't mind passing on all the data, either.

I wonder what other causes of death have been noted among the condors? Power lines?

 

[sm]

How about the 9th Circuit and the Condors swap "enviroments"...

 

[Oleg Volk]

Talk about a strong incentive to kill off already endangered species! However, it would be more appropriate to use environmentalists as condor food, in my opinion.

 

[R.H. Lee]

I wonder what other causes of death have been noted among the condors? Power lines?

Funny you should mention that. We had 3 condors living on our mountain top here last year. Had patageal (sp?) markers so they were identifiable. One got fried on a power line down at the end of the road. Split her open along the breastbone. People came from hundreds of miles away to pick her up.

 

[hso]

How is this different than the lead shot question?

 

[4v50 Gary]

Ban New Yorkers from California!

 

[schizrade]

Before europeans arrived, the Condor was being phased out by nature. The species can no longer survive for whatever reasons but we have propped it up till the next sickness decimates the Condor pop.

 

[Grey54956]

I can understand doing away with lead shot for bird and small game. This makes some sense, as the volume of lead shot to down a bird or other small critter is fairly high. When hunting doves, my buddies and I are lucky if our shot-to-kill ratio is better than 3:1. That's a little more than 3 oz. of lead for every bird we get. And I as sure that regardless of what your shooting, some birds or critters are going to get away with a few non-fatal pellets. So I could see it.

For hunting larger game with rifle or handgun, I don't think that lost game accounts for an awful lot of lead being introduced into the wild.

I think that most of the problem would be caused by lead shot.

 

[erik the bold]

just shoot the condors, and voila, no need for a lead ban. or is that to simple?

Are they good eating???

 

[brian roberts]

condors....lead.....

well, they have to do SOMETHING to get lead banned, then the military will go "green" by using tungsten from that munitions plant the chinese set up out there; then, well, it'll be too expensive for regular "civvy" bullet makers....and......we got 'em comin' outta the woodwork, don't we....

 

[steveno]

condors are kind of tough eating. spotted owls kind of taste like quail. whooping cranes have a taste that I haven't been able to compare it to.

 

[JOE MACK]

Bizzaros and large buzzards

I wonder how many condors met their demise when all that was used for hunting was pure lead bullets? It says they've been doing better the last 14 months. What's changed? The envirowhackos can always find something.

We are told the spotted owl needs old growth timeber to nest and raise chicks. That's BS, we've seen them nesting in many other trees, rusted out car bodies, and even old 5 gallon cans on the ground!. It's just a case of we don't like what you do so we're going to cause you trouble.

This latest strike against firearms and hunters has nothing at all to do with the condor. It's just one more end around to diminish hunting and shooting by the dimwits that don't like either. I really wish we could find something they enjoy and legislate it away.

 

[1911Ron]

If i remember right they have been using steel shot for some time right? So where do all the "lead laced carcasses" coming from? Am i missing something?
For the record i recently heard that California wanted to start their own country or something like that, i say we let them.

 

[sumpnz]

I don't support what they're doing, but I think they're claiming that gut piles (and the bullets and fragments contained therein) is what is causing the lead poisoning. I don't know what percentage of hunters find exit wounds on their deer/elk/bear/moose but I'd imagine it's a fairly high percentage. Therefore, the amount of lead in the gut piles can't be all that high. So I call BS on the "cause" of the lead poisoning.

BTW, if they did succeed in this insanity couldn't we just use monolithic copper bullets like the Barnes X bullets? I know they're more expen$ive, but if all bullets were made like that (or perhaps with some other core that would not make it "armor piercing") the cost would come down.

 

[Ryder]

How about teflon coated bullets? Hahaha.

Why would hunters leave dead animals in the field? I thought the object was to take them home with you? True enough I left many a gut pile in the wild but I know for a fact none of them had bullets in them. It is rare for a bullet to slow down enough to be recovered. In 30 years I only recovered one and that was shot from a rifle with a low muzzle velocity. The typical shot would be more like this one deer I shot under the chin where the bullet exited between the hing legs into the dirt. I quit trying to dig that bullet up after I realized I'd need a shovel.

 

[Sisco]

Before europeans arrived, the Condor was being phased out by nature. The species can no longer survive for whatever reasons but we have propped it up till the next sickness decimates the Condor pop.

I've long had this theory that God took another look at the condor and said "Wow! I shure messed up there, that is one ugly bird. Think I'll phase it out".
He just about had it done, had 'em whittled down to a couple dozen then Humans stepped in and started undoing His work.

 

[benEzra]

BTW, if they did succeed in this insanity couldn't we just use monolithic copper bullets like the Barnes X bullets? I know they're more expen$ive, but if all bullets were made like that (or perhaps with some other core that would not make it "armor piercing") the cost would come down.

Except that the Federal law banning "cop-killer bullets" outlaws any handgun ammunition (and any rifle ammunition in .223, 7.62x39, and .308, per a 1994 BATF(E) administrative ruling) from being so constructed. There might be a way to make ammunition out of really soft copper that wouldn't violate the ban for low-velocity handguns, but I don't see how you'd get around the rifle-caliber issue. Maybe sintered-metal-powder bullets might work, but the 1986 law might have to be altered. And ammunition prices sure would go up, not a problem for some box-a-year hunters but a big problem for recreational shooters at large.

BTW, I think the real intent behind the current "cop-killer bullet" issue, and Kennedy's bill last session, is to give the Attorney General the authority to ban politically incorrect rifle calibers like .223 and 7.62x39, thereby sterilizing the millions of guns out there that use them. The Kennedy bill didn't require that ammunition meeting the penetration criteria be banned, it just gave the AG the power to ban it. So an AG could ban any caliber at whim.