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Posted on 12/14/2006 9:42:49 AM PST by Redcloak
NRA Members' Councils of California
Legislative Info and Contact Tools
AMMO BAN
Summary: NRA opposes this measure.
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These birds have been going extinct since the end of the last ice age. The odd bullet is the least of their probems.
How about collisions with windmills?
Most, if not all of the collisions were with overhead wires. IIRC, Enron ended up scrapping plans to build windmills in the Gorman area over concerns about the condor, so what you are recalling may never have happened. Windmill mortality is a documented cause of raptor mortality however, especially near the Altamont Pass.
Yeah, on its face I don't believe it either.
The number of hunters is down to begin with. And in that territory how hard is it to lose track of game that is shot?
I see this as an excuse for something the greenofascists have been after for a long time.
Stock up now!
By and large, most of the Southern California mountains are arduous terrain, inhospitable to a hunter. It's steep, rocky, hot, dry, and covered with brush.
But if they're hunting there they are prepared to track what they shoot.
I've spent time around Barstow/Needles and Southern Cal. coast but not much further inland from San Diego. Also lived in Monterey for a year.
If there were hundreds of thousands of condor and thousands of dead animals with lead shot begging to be eaten, I may begin to believe them. But the numbers are not in their favor.
IIRC, lead has been found in their systems, but the source has never been identified. Lead wheel weights could just as easily explain the lead. However, broken glass washed down with radiator fluid seems to me to be a far more immediate threat to their health!
Oh... And "starvation" is also listed as a major cause of condor deaths. Perhaps those eeeeeeevil, lead-tainted gut piles and lost game animals aren't such a bad thing after all.
With all due respect, you are not being totally candid on what the reports say regarding alternatives to lead-based ammunition used in the condor's range.
From the Federal Condor Recovery Plan, 3rd Revision (1996), page 11-
"...Post-mortem examinations performed on four California condors found dead since 1983, indicated that three of the birds died from the effects of lead poisoning (Janssen et al. 1986, Wiemeyer et al (1988), and one died of cyanide poisoning (Wiemeyer et al, op cit). High lead levels, presumably obtained from the ingestion of fragments of lead bullets in shot mammal carcasses, may be a pervasive problem throughout the historical foraging range of the California condor. For example, Bloom et al (1989) and Pattee et al. (1990) found elevated levels in one-third of 162 golden eagle blood samples taken in the range of the California condor in 1985-1986, and Wiemeyer et al (1988) concluded that lead exposure was the major factor having an adverse impact on the wild California condor population between 1982-1986. The possible effects on condors of another highly toxic metal, copper, have not been investigated, but Wiemeyer et al. (1983) reported high copper levels in the liver tissue of an immature condor found dead from unknown causes in 1974..."
While a certain number of condors have been identified in the current campaign against ammunition to have died from ingestion of lead, it is clear that condor recovery advocates identified copper as a potential target of a possible ban back in 1996.
As far as I can determine from web searches, Project Gutpile and the other "hunter" advocates who have joined with the NRDC and the Center For Biological Diversity in the lawsuit against the Fish and Game Commission are currently only advocating use of the Barnes' copper slug as the "environmentally-friendly" replacement for standard lead ammunition. Once lead is out of the way, NRDC et al will then proceed to "document" the toxic effect of copper to condors in the historical foraging range, as well as the add on range in Northern Arizona and Southern Utah. Then they will proceed with the same game plan on banning copper ammo.
In other words, without intervention from a knowledgeable hunting community, big game hunting in the condor's historical range (west of the Continental Divide) is on death watch.
If the Project Gutpile folks cannot read this in the documentation, they are surely blind. And, by such "sleeping with the enemy" tactics as suing other hunters, they only divide pro-hunting and pro-gun forces for the purposes of eventual defeat at the hands of the the Endangered Species Act.
Remember, condor mortality is not only related to lead ammo. Condor mortality is also related to habitat that is "man-free" (Biologists currently maintain that condors will stop nesting activity unless all human activity is halted within 1.5 miles radius from a nest site). Yet condors have been ever-increasingly dependent upon cattle carcasses as a replacement for the long-dead megafauna the condors foraged on in the Pleistocene era. In other words, without man condors would have starved out long ago, except for those sub-populations that were able to feed on sea-mammal carcasses along a narrow strip from Ventura to Big Sur. Given concerns over mercury and chemical contamination in some sea mammal populations (orcas, pinnepeds), condors may not have a way out unless NRDC et al can successfully sue to halt all human chemical industries.
Condor mortality has also been documented to be related to power lines in their forage area, when Edison has not yet completed modifications to keep condors from perching on towers. Some power lines off of the main trunks serve as successful perches for other raptors (redtails, eagles, sparrowhawks, Coooper's hawks), yet scientists have reported in the past that condors who show ANY proclivity to perch near power poles and lines have to be removed from the wild, hopefully for re-training.
Another case in point is the reportage from the Big Sur area about condors ingesting common garbage (bottle caps, wire, roadside garbage) so as to require their recapture and surgical remediation. Otherwise, said condors would have surely croaked. And is the NRDC et al suing the State of California in Federal Court over the insufficient policing of roadside litter in such places as Ventura, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara Counties? Hardly.
Yet another case in point is the issue of West Nile disease, and the future impact of avian flu. The risk from West Nile was considered so severe as to warrant the recovery of re-introduced condors and inoculate them with a modified west nile vaccine (derived from those forms approved for horses). Given that release of condors may expose them to a presently incurable flu virus, it could even be a violation of the Endangered Species Act to knowingly release condors when an exposure to avian flu could wipe the existing population.
In other words, there appears to be some merit in an original Audobon position that formal condor recovery, in terms of release to the wild, may not be practical nor feasible. Condors may have to remain "pets of the state", in the form of being maintained in captivity, until such time as their fate can be finally determined. Left to nature, they could have passed on already.
It is true that hunters should be aware of the current science, and be conservationists too. But they should not be patsies in allowing themselves to be cornered into being disarmed through incremental administrative means. It is up to all to know the difference, and act accordingly.
I appreciate your service. That said, the reason we are in the pickle we are in is that the population of California has increased dramatically and as a result, open spaces are limited. That means condors have less and less space to forage over, and more people are sharing the reduced space that is left. I have indeed looked at the research and am only convinced that the condors don't have what it takes to survive in the wild. Not with as many humans in their range as we have today. Sad, but true nonetheless.
This is a good time for patriots be stockpiling valuable commodities such as lead, primers, powder, etc. before the "democratic" dictatorship assumes power in January.
Before you head off for the gun store, take the time to hit that ONE-CLICK link above. If one stupid condor catches a stray gust and gets lost in Texas, then you'll be screwed too. IIRC, they're being released in New Mexico; so, it wouldn't take much for one to show up in Texas.
...and I'm just not seeing anything that looks like a bullet. Bottle caps, yes; but no bullets.
As to their supposed need to be far from humans, they'll steal the nachos right off your table if you're not watching.
Lead bullets from high power deer rifles being eaten by condors who eat gut piles?
Extremely doubtful.
A high powered rifle blows thru the deer. In and through it.
gun control isnt about hunting or those facts or any facts or reality at all - it is about perceptions that antigunners can use their media sympathizers to con the American public into believing to further their ultimate aims to disarm The People.
This is a two-pronged approach they began in 1981 with NBC News' Big Lie whole-cloth invention of the "cop-killer bullet" [at the time NO police officer had EVER been killed by the KTW bullet they so dubbed - in fact said bullet was designed BY 2 cops and a coroner for the police purpose of stopping felons automobiles and only sold TO cops - which didnt stop the Big Lie from being repeated THOUSANDS of times in both news and entertainment programs ever since].
The message - non lead projectiles are cop killers - BAN EM!
Around the same time the 'steel shot' campaign was ratcheted up with this same concern over lead ingestion by waterfowl.
The message - lead projectiles are wildlife killers - BAN EM!
Well now what a coincidence - NON-lead projectiles BAN EM! - LEAD projectiles also BAN EM!
leaving what? NERF projectiles to defend against predators?
Air-kisses and please dont kill me mr rapist murderer sir?
Piecemeal gun control...dont fall for it.
Dont doubt it...the antis simply need lead to be declared a hazardous substance require special Hazmat handling training and a prohibitively expensive Hazmat handling licence...buh-bye reloading.
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