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 don’t know how many rounds YOU let off when hunting - but for the cost per round fired - it isn’t that much of an expense to use copper bullets when hunting - and lead for target practice.
Copper works better as well.
Hunters are generally good conservationists as well. They want to preserve wild places and wild populations.
I think Condors are worth a couple cents per round.
But maybe that is just me.
It would not surprise me if direct or indirect grants from groups like The Brady Campaign, The Joyce Foundation or other anti-gun groups paid for the study.
As you said "follow the money trail"
BTW:
Barack Obama was a director of the Joyce Foundation for 8 years (1994 to 2002)
The extinction of species is as natural as the death of individuals and just as certain. As with an individual you might be able to prolong its life but ultimately there is nothing you can do to prevent the end of it.
Left-wingers say EVERYTHING is the fault of humans. Right-wingers say EVERYTHING scientists say is a Commie-Muslim plot. A pox on both houses.
Nice picture of two buzzards right there.
They’re picking the bones of our nation as I type...
the birds still suffer from lead poisoning caused by scavenging the carcasses of animals shot with lead-based ammunition. Unless this source of lead is eliminated, the “birds will never survive without human help, a new study finds.
Unlike many other carrion eaters, condors feed predominantly on the remains of large animals, which are more likely to have been shot than roadkill or small animals partially eaten by larger ones. Even small amounts of lead can affect the nervous system and kidneys of birds, mammals, and humans. In condors, high levels of lead can shut down the digestive system, causing the birds to starve.”
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/06/scavenged-bullets-dooming-condor.html
In the process of eating a carcass, a condor could actually swallow a bullet itself. Even if it doesn’t, the meat itself has lead poisoning. But go on believing it’s just a Commie-Muslim plot to take your shootin irons away.
I don't believe the premise that condors are being killed off from spent ammo, but digestive juices could leach some lead into your system if you swallowed some. They attribute much of the erratic behavior of the Roman emperors to the habit of storing wine in lead containers because it made it taste sweeter...
Why would someone go to condor country, shoot a large animal, and leave it? The only large animal is the mule deer, unless you want to call a raccoon or coyote large.
Also, if the animal is dead, the lead from the bullet cannot enter the bloodstream and be distributed. The carcass cannot have “lead poisoning” from a 168 grain piece of lead. The condor would need to eat the bullet and jacket.
I think the proof is simple- there should be plenty of large animal carcases to find in condor country if this is true. They’d have to be more than 50 yards from a road to distinguish them from roadkill, and I’ve seen quite a few roadkill mulies.
Also, why is this a problem now, when people have been shooting lead bullets in condor country for many decades? Why didn’t this eliminate the condor back in 1890 when many more people hunted for food than now? I’d like to see some data from preserved specimens from a natural history museum to see what lead levels the birds had a few decades ago.
So the California condor goes extinct. So what?
This is what drives me up a wall about leftists and rightists. The lefties want to ban everything. The righties don’t give a rats ass about God’s Creation as long as they can make a stinking buck. Once again, a pox on both houses.
You're wrong. We are commanded to be good stewards of what God has given us. The monies that would go to condor preservation are much better used to serve people. The condor fills no unique niche in nature, lots of other scavengers around. As was posted up thread, over 99% of all species ever on the earth have gone extinct. Do you want us to stop the way nature works?
But the issue of whether or not the lead is actually in the condors, and where it came from IS important.
If the government bureaucracies can just pull hypohtesis out of their asses and ban stuff without a fight or demonstration of verifiable facts, then we’re screwed.
RIGHT at this moment, as of Brown signing the budget bill here, small scale suction dredging on personal claims is PERMANENTLY BANNED. The “evidence” leading to this action was freakin’ trash, and the “hearings” were specifically slated to be in areas where the victims of the legislation would be forced to drive hundreds of miles to them, or pay for airfare.
The state and fed bozo’s have a LONG history of fabricating crap to get their ends achieved, IMHO, everything a government agency wants to do at this time should be fought tooth and nail because it always has an ulterior and negative motive.
If the goverment all of the sudden came out saying 3 year olds shouldn’t run with scissors, I’d smell a rat...
Like why in the hell wouldn't they??? Lead in everthing else is going to have the same ratios. It's not like ammo is made from special asteroid lead, or imported stuff, while wheel weights and batteries is made from other sources of it...
Yeah, that's what went through my head. What, are ammunition factories using lead recycled from nuclear reactors or something?
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