Posted on 02/03/2005 6:49:16 AM PST by RKV
The California Fish and Game Commission on Friday will consider a bold proposal to help the endangered California condor: a ban on lead bullets.
Several environmental groups and some hunters have petitioned the state for an immediate ban on the use of lead ammunition in the range of the California condor, which includes parts of Los Padres National Forest, and an eventual phase-out throughout the state to protect other wildlife.
The commission will consider the proposal and hear public comments at its meeting Friday in San Diego.
Condors swallow the bullets by eating carcasses of animals that have been shot. There have been voluntary efforts to encourage hunters to switch to lead-free ammunition, but the petitioners say that's not enough.
"The condor can't wait 20 years for enough people to decide to start using it," said Jeff Miller of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the petitioners.
"Unfortunately, we've had to be this radical, but nobody's doing anything. They talk about it and talk about it and talk about it," said Anthony Prieto of Santa Barbara, a hunter who has worked as a volunteer on condor recovery efforts and signed the petition.
He also helped found "Project Gutpile," a loose coalition of hunters and biologists working to encourage hunters to go lead-free or bury the remains of carcasses containing lead fragments.
Over the past decade, at least half a dozen California condors have died of lead poisoning -- including two that appear to have succumbed to lead in the past month -- and lead toxicity has been implicated in at least a dozen other deaths.
More than two dozen other birds have had to be captured and treated to remove lead from their blood. The total population of California condors now stands at about 240, about 110 of those in the wild and the rest in captive breeding programs.
Various types of lead-free ammunition are available, though many are more expensive than the lead versions and some hunters say they don't perform as well.
Petitioners will ask the commission to offer rebates and buybacks if the proposal passes.
Some hunters say there's more to the proposed ban than just protecting wildlife. "This isn't about condors," wrote one person on the online conservative forum Free Republic. "It's about de facto gun control via ammunition control."
e-mail: adavison@newspress.com
Some hunters? How many? 2? 3? What do they hunt? Two-legged beavers?.....
I agree with respect to your flag signals. Heh.
Hundreds of thousands of humans must bear the cost of a few dozen condors based on unproven assertions, rather than science. Even if the science is right, the principle of cost/benefit should be used to determine what the appropriate course of action is.
State to consider ban on lead bullets - fyi.
Roger the Bravo Sierra!
Whatever it takes to make firearms affordable for less and less Californians. Pretty soon they hope that only movie stars, police and government officials will be able to afford firearms. What a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful world that would be.
Why don't all the people move out of the State (to Canuckistan) so that it can be turned into a human free zone. Or if that is too ambitious lets corral the humans into fenced zoo-like enclosures so that the vast majority of the state is given over to nature.
By jove, I think you've got it. Grrrr.
I must be psychic. As soon as I read the title, somehow I knew that I would see the word "California" very, very soon.
This just sounds incredible to me. How do they come up with this stuff? How does anyone know what a Condor ate, and then know that the partakings had a lead bullet in it? Don't hunters eat birds that have been killed with lead shotgun shot? Sounds like this is just made up stuff to put more restrictions on gun owners.
Lead shot for duck hunting has been banned in New Jersey for years, due to ingestion of shot by waterfowl when feeding.
Screw the Condor. It's an ugly old bird anyway.
What a lie.
How many "hunters" shoot an animal and then don't drag it home?
OK, where can I get depleted uranium bullets for a .30-06? That's the ticket.
What hunters are leaving carcasses for the condors to eat? Let's find those few bad eggs who aren't tracking down what they shoot.
To be honest, I'm starting to think that more stringent hunting licensing (IOW, you need to be a qualified hunter) might be a good idea, given all the idiots in hunting outfits out there. Not yet, but the more idiots I see the stronger the thought becomes.
Naw... shoot the damn condors. Really give them lead poisioning!
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