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 ...
There is only one solution to this problem ... and you gun nuts ain't going to like it!
Bull crap
BS
Oh baloney!
The lead poisoning is being caused by global warming...
Nice try commie. Ain’t gonna work.
Just how is it that the condor’s diet is so rich in lead? Do they purposely seek out expended bullets? Do they only eat rodents previously shot with lead projectiles? Do they live where there’s alot of lead dust in the air?
Seriously... how does this happen?
Nice try commie. Ain’t gonna work.
Another push to ban lead in ammunition. But just where is all of this hunting going on in California?
What do Californians hunt, and when is that season?
Do these enviro nuts not realize that question will be asked? The condors have to have a source of lead first. That would be from animals shot by hunters and then left for dead, which hunters do not do.
These extremists are foolish enough to believe their “study” will be widely accepted without question.
Fortunately things don’t work that way.
Hh, no - wait.
Unethical hunters go into the wild, shoot anything and everything that moves and then leaves the carcasses for the condors to eat.
OK - I get it.
What about the populations of other large birds ?
Lead has been used for over a hundred years, fired at migratory water fowl over lakes, rivers and streams. The lead sinks to the bottom of the lake, river or stream, and stays put. Why don’t we see elevated lead rates in our drinking water from these lakes, rivers and streams? Certainly our drinking water would be adversely affected, right?
The lead in ammo is solid, it’s not a powder, it’s not a liquid - it’s a solid mass that will pass through the gut and be expelled along with other indigestable matter. Just like lead in solder, it’s chemically bound - it’s not a free radical.
This doesn't pass the smell test, and is clearly a statistic thrown in to force a "total ban" on lead ammunition.
This means that greater regulation of lead-based ammunition will be necessary to protect condors. Alternatives to lead ammunition are widely available, but regulations to limit the use of lead ammunition are opposed by most hunting organizations and ‘gun-rights’ groups.
And there it is, but I'm wondering why gun-rights is in quotes. The obvious reason is to call it into question.
It’s interesting to note that the ‘Californian’ condor was widespread throughout North America only 10,000 years ago, and throughout all of the Americas before that.
10,000 years ago. Long before lead ammunition arrived. Perhaps the demise of large ice-age mammals has been the downfall of the condor.
The two idiots pictured above have fecal matter in their heads which constitutes their out look on life....and America...what used to be.
And all this time I thought it was the windmills that were chopping up the condors.
“There have been efforts to solve the problem of lead exposure in California — state regulations now ban the use of lead ammunition in condor habitat. There was a partial ban that began in July 2008 and was then expanded. So far, researchers haven’t found any evidence that the ban has resulted in a the blood lead levels of condors being reduced.”
According to the article, the lead in birds traces back to ammo. But if you eliminate the ammo and the birds still get leaded, seems to me something in the initial hypothesis is wrong.
In my experience with lead absorption- the battery business- time flushes lead out of the system. If these birds have a constant diet of lead, seems like every picture you take of condor feeding would include a leaded carcass.
Sounds like BS to me.
Some Democrat’s sister needs a job. She’ll be looking for lead in condor crap at $130,000 a year.
Maybe the birds are finding old buildings and licking the paint? If they have increased lead in their systems, there must be other causes than "ammo".
Guess I need to start breeding condors and selling them to gun ranges...
Those mugs look like a couple of mean buzzards.
You are using facts, logic, and reason.
The disingenuous liberals hope to fool the uneducated masses with lies and half truths and you are spoiling their story.
I think the condors are sucking the wheel weights off tires.
Probably the tires on the researcher’s vehicles. I submit California researchers are causing condor lead poisoning.
Ban California researchers and see if the problem doesn’t go away. Bet my hypothesis is as statistically sound as theirs.
Silly rabbit, no amount of contrary evidence can EVER disprove a liberal hypothesis, only show that their powers and jurisdiction aren't widespread enough or that enforcement hasn't been draconian enough.
And yet all the other vulture species are doing fine. Hmmmm, what is that I smell?
The econut windmills chop these critters (and all sorts of other birds and bats) into bloody bits every hour. Just what do these aholes have to say about that? I think LIB moonbats chew on lead-paint window sills as a hobby.
This is obviously bull crap without evidence that the lead is actually being consumed by the birds.
An unbiased environmental survey of the condor habitat would need to be done, and find actual evidence of lead-contaminated carrion that is prevalent enough to cause these effects, compared to other lead sources in the habitat.
Of course, we’d also need evidence that the condors were actually feeding on this carrion. And that this consumption was measurable affecting their lead levels. And that the elevated lead levels were measurably affecting their health.
But the BIG missing link in the chain of causation is the existence of lead-contaminated carrion in the condor habitat.
They come out with this same old BS every few years. I'm surprised that there's one bird left in the sky over America..........
Humans being driven to extinction from the green agenda and UN agenda 21
There, fixed it!
An Fw 200 Condor driven to extinction by lead poisoning.
Unfortunately not true. The digestive tract of all birds/animals contains fairly srong hydrochloric acid. "Some" of the lead WILL dissolve and be ingested. In addition, birds have "crops" which grind the ingested food with small stones that they swallow. This abrasive action will put "some" of the lead into the form of small particles that WILL dissolve under the action of said hydrochloric acid (and other enzymes).
Don't forget....diet of predators has to digest BONE fragments (basically calcium phosphate). Lead, like calcium, forms a doubly charged ion, and so will tend to follow the same biochemical paths as calcium.
All that said, I "still" think the "study" is bogus. The probability of condors (very small population) ingesting solid bullets is so small to be negligible.
Remember the story of the lynx hairs.
It probably has nothing to do with the amount of lead in fish. I wonder what condors eat (besides spent ammunition).
Need a partner? Based on the research in this article, it would seem a lucrative proposition.
I would love to see the research on this as I don’t believe it.
Metallic lead (99.999% of the lead ingested) is expended immediately in animals.
The volume of lead ingested would have to be present in the majority of animals eaten in order to get these levels of lead in the system, and I do not for a minute beleive that the majority of animals eaten have lead in them.
If this is the case, and I suspect that it is not, there is probably another source for lead oxide, which is the main culprit.
Gosh, so Fast and Furious won’t be available to “brainwash Americans against guns*”, so now shooters are causing wildfires in Colorado and Utah, and poisoning condors in California.
Hunters don’t leave behind lead-infested carcases, so this is bull.
OTOH Mitt Romney “hunts rodents”, so maybe it’s him?
*Eric Holder said he needs to brainwash Americans against guns
I appreciate your fine use of liberal logic. By any chance do you work for a certain advertising agency that also represents a certain cable programming/Dish company?
So they imply that hunters go out, shoot the deer and leave the carcass.
Even after field dressing an animal, generally the viscera is buried.
They would have people believe animals are shot and left - which gives us insight as to their own ethics.
University of Santa Cruz researchers/scientists - no need to read past that part. I have seen more B.S. studies from that intellectual sink-hole than I can remember.
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.
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