Posted on 06/26/2012 5:44:18 AM PDT by Zakeet
New research from environmental toxicologists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows that California condors are exposed to harmful levels of lead regularly. The main source of this being from ingesting lead ammunition. This continual exposure to lead is preventing the condor’s recovery — if it wasn’t for condor recovery programs, this issue would have already led to the bird’s extinction.
The new findings are reported in a paper to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Study author Myra Finkelstein, a research toxicologist at UC Santa Cruz, said that the research makes it clear that without a permanent solution to the problem of lead poisoning, “the condor population can only be sustained through intensive and costly management efforts.”
“We will never have a self-sustaining wild condor population if we don’t solve this problem,” she said. “Currently, California condors are tagged and monitored, trapped twice a year for blood tests, and when necessary treated for lead poisoning in veterinary hospitals, and they still die from lead poisoning on a regular basis.”
(Excerpt) Read more at planetsave.com ...
I thought all the condors were killed off by DDT??????
A look at the funding for this study might be interesting.
They may have managed to use Rachael Carson’s lies about DDT to kill millions of people, but junk science just isn’t what it used to be.
I can’t say that people blindly look to the alter of BS like they used to. Otherwise their GlowBull warming would be the law everywhere.
On the other hand, if they give the tinpot a second term...
¿Seriesly?
I see new *algae-tipped rounds” legislation in the near future. Comes in red, brown & green, for variety. 5-7gr loads, 15fps, range 20ft. LOL.
That 0bummer-Holder pic looks like a “two-headed hydra”, to me.
whata steaming pantload.
the only thing facing extinction is their jobs if they stop perpetuating the lies.
I`ll believe it when Judge Roy Bean declares it so.
All- how about this: they are faking lead levels. Like they went and planted wildcat hairs to prove that some Weyerhauser tree farm was an endangered habitat.
As to it's biological availability, it fairly quickly gets an oxide layer on it (which might also have a taste aspect to it if they have a taste ability) and the birds have a crop with stones in it which would abrade it (and may also be another reson they prefer the softer lead as a "crop gravel").
If you doubt the quantity, I cast .44 cal round balls from lead I find, and most of it is from weights found along the freeways, about 10 or so pounds every few months coincident with working along the roadsides.
Another realistic scenario is that they collect crop mass from an area which had a lead rich deposit eroded into it within the last 10,000 years.
Both scenarios are more likely than bullets, especially if they aren't coughing up pictures of the residual bullets or fragments from necropsied birds.
Socialists will tell you any kind of BS Lie, if they can advance their agenda.
This is just another bullsh!t story for consumption by the gullible unwashed masses.
“the condor population can only be sustained through intensive and costly management efforts.”
Well, what’s their complaint? Isn’t that the very situation the Feds lust after?
Can also simply delete the word “condor” for greater relevancy.
While the article is bogus it is also irrelevant.
So the California condor goes extinct. So what? What do we lose. There are other scavengers in that niche. Why are we even wasting the money to preserve an animal that cannot compete?
(I’m assuming that most liberals are also evolutionists) Why would the liberals be upset when evolution removes an unsuccessful species?
Even if true, so what? 99 percent of all species that ever inhabited the planet are extinct...adapt or die.
Since condor numbers have increased from 22 to nearly 400 over the last thirty years (as indicated in the cited article), the article’s headline sensationalizes and overstates the problem.
A 2009 survey of 6500 hunters in the field by California Fish and Game found that 99% were using non-lead bullets/shot. Tickets were given to non-compliers.
There are other sources of lead. Galena (lead sulfide) is found naturally in California. I used to pick up pieces of galena when I worked in a mine in Colorado.
Lead paint is used on the blades of wind farm turbines.
They cited an earlier study claiming degree of lead poisoning in the birds correlates with the degree to which the isotope ratio in the bird matches lead isotope ratios on ammunition. I'm having trouble finding the details of these studies, I'm trying to contact the PI and see if I can get a copy. The report seems to raise some significant questions WRT the impact of the decline in lead ammunition use making no difference in the incidence of poisoning.
We should seriously question the validity of the isotope ratio metric without data or reproducible results. There is quite a bit of metal recycling going on, after all.
I'd also like to see research data on gut piles full of lead fragments being consumed by vultures. Seems like other vultures compete in the same habitat - they should have comparable lead levels.
i say they’re being rendered sterile by estrogen from tofu.
Those awful vegans, so selfish.
I bet the lead is being picked up from Galena slag from old silver/lead smelters in the Condors range. Lots of them around.
This would explain it. The ammo meme is garbage.
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