I just added a post to another form regarding three Condor Deaths in and around Arizona and Utah.

my post

What I failed to mention in that thread was a comment on the use of leaded ammo in the northern units and that is "why?"

[warning soapbox]

If G&F is asking us to voluntarily use non-lead ammunition in and around those area's to avoid such law suits, why not just use non-lead ammo?

I know the arguments about the ammo is too expensive; it won't give me the same accuracy; "why should I fix what ain't broke?". Here's why, it happen California.

I met a guy and his adult son a few seasons ago while hunting unit 9. The jerk saw I was putting a stalk on some deer and fired his rifle into the air from his (moving) truck. Fast forward to that night, we run into the same duo at a local gas station. We exchanged pleasantries and notes, he began to show me his custom ($3000+) 30-06 rifle. I asked if he was using non-lead ammo. "Hell no, why should I?" Not only was he using leaded ammo, he was using 150gr non-jacketed bullet.

So, am I just being naive? I mean, I use ammo with lead, just not in units where G&F has asks hunters not to use it. I categorize using non-lead ammo in and around those units with the same responsibility as picking up your trash from your campsite or putting out your campfire before you leave. If it gets the anti's a little more off our backs and gives them less fuel, why not?

Alright, I'm done.

HaYen this issue is along way from me but one question is there any real proof the lead in bullets is killing the Condor and not another source. I just think the chance of a Condor picking up lead from a hunters gut pile some what low.

Alan

If some are voluntarily running no lead in certain areas because of condors, it sounds like the anti's already won a few to their way of thinking.

I guess I won't fault the guy for not.

Beware of the great condor ammo-ban scam. In Calif., the antis managed to pass legislation outlawing the use of lead ammo not only in current condor habitat, but also IN HISTORIC CONDOR HABITAT, thereby outlawing the use of lead ammo in vast areas where there ARE NO CONDORS.

Considering how long lead ammo has been in use in the USA, and when you think about the amount of deer guts that haven been left around the place, how come Condors have no become extinct long ago?

No agency has had a political campaign to outlaw them....

They were extinct in the wild. The ENTIRE population of them is captured several times a year for lead abatement! I spent several days fishing in Marble Canyon a few years ago and had condors perched within 10 feet of my tent. They are amazing.


Fast forward to 2007. My son had a elk tag in unit 10. We got the propaganda from G&F, I think they even sent us a coupon for some copper bullets?? I loaded up 180 grain Fail Safes. They aren't lead free, but they don't fragment like a typical jacketed bullet. I think that the Peregrine fund is exaggerating the problem with lead but no doubt, it it real. I don't think they eat prairie dogs but I used some Barnes varmint bullets when hunting PDs in unit 10 this past summer. I will do my part to make neighborly concessions when possible.

I suspect that G&F is just being proactive to prevent or at least forestall a major conflict with these guys.

Have any birds been autopsied and found to have high levels of lead in their blood? You would think they'd just crap the stuff out. Breathing dust is the usual way of ingesting lead.

Yes, they blood test the LIVE birds frequently and have to treat them for lead poisoning!

By 1987 all the remaining wild condors were captured for a captive breeding program. It has been relatively successful but now lead seems to be the biggest killer. I don't know if hunters are to blame or not but certainly it is a possibility. I don't agree with lead-containing ammo bans but am willing to be more careful with carcasses than in the past.

I guess there are other places for the birds to ingest lead but it seems logical that bullet fragments in carcasses could be a prime source.

Here is a link to some of the lead studies.

lead in condors


routine lead testing??

Article about routine tests


According to this last article, apparently shotgun pellets in the body don't cause lead poisoning. I guess it has to be ingested??

I don't see any solid evidence.
The California study danced around with chest beating BS and said that the lead could have come from gut piles.

They have fed condors dead dairy calves from the central valley for years.
Our La Panza Cal Fire station has a cold storage box that the condor folks
kept said calves in.

You could just as easily speculate that the elevated lead came fro the dairy calves
via water from the San Joaquin valley.

To do the investigation correctly you have to eliminate all other possibilities.

The California study does not do that.

We REALLY have a lot of wackos here!

The real science is questionable as to the lead. The actual causes of death of most condors are high power lines (frying themselves or flying into them.) There has been a determined (and costly) effort to refute the previous studies, and it is effective - recent attempts to require lead-free shot for upland game in "teh zone" have been defeated. Similar efforts to make the ban effective state-wide are also being defeated, since the original studies are so faulty.

Yes, ingested lead will kill. However, it is not the huge problem it is made out to be.

Besides - why are turkey vultures thriving and they eat the same carrion as the condors????

Turkey vultures are in the same family as California condors but are anatomically different enough that they are classified in a different genus and species. Their digestive physiology is sufficiently different that exposure to lead in their diet is apparently always fatal without treatment. The lead is absorbed into the bloodstream and deposited in various tissues eventually resulting in organ failure and death.

Here are some articles that will get you started on the literature if you really want answers to your questions:

http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/press_releases/text.asp?pid=927

http://www.jwildlifedis.org/cgi/reprint/42/4/772.pdf

http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1647/2007-035.1

The science sounds like the same BS in Iowa. Tons of venison was wrongly thrown out due to misinformation from the same scientist involved in the condor lead study. Very happy we have no condors in my great state. Although they did stock lynx which has allowed them to pass a lot of endangered species legislation they couldn't until they had an actual victim.

They transplanted Lynx in Nebraska??????????

Are you sure about that?


Casey

I think that he must be in Colorado--incognito, no doubt.

No, they transplanted lynx without adequate populations of snowshoe hares to feed them right here in Colorado. Course you knew that. Now when they gradually die out again, we can perhaps stock wolverines or wolves.

"The science sounds like the same BS in Iowa. Tons of venison was wrongly thrown out due to misinformation from the same scientist involved in the condor lead study. "

Citation?

http://www.iowadnr.gov/other/hush/index.html
http://www.iowadnr.gov/other/hush/files/iowadnr_lead.pdf

Minnesota.....

No meat was thrown away here, to my knowledge.

Sorry, might have been North Dakota. This link says enough for me:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2130355/posts

I usually process my own game and have zero concern over lead exposure as a result to my family or myself.

Yeah, we had quite the brawl going on in the General Big Game Forum over that. Seems there was a shill for the lead free types. Didn't impress with brain power.

Thanks for the reply folks. I was singed a little around the edges on a thread similar to this one in another form a while back. I am by no means an anti-lead shooter, but if using non-leaded bullets in certain area's will help the anti's to go away, I'm in.

Some of your responses have me asking some new questions like is the California ban working? What else could be killing these birds? Are other animals dieing due to ingesting lead (obviously their dieing due to lead )? There were some answers but it still makes you think.

Have a great day!!!

HaYen

Safe for human consumption is not safe for California condors. We humans can tolerate quite a bit of lead in our tissues before symptoms of chronic lead poisoning start to manifest themselves. Noel Snyder, a retired (and well-respected) avian biologist who worked with condor restoration for many years, put it to me succinctly. He said, "If a condor bites a bullet, it dies".

Whether or not we should be trying to save a species that seems poorly suited to the realities of life in modern North America is a political argument. The science behind the threat of lead poisoning in California condors has never been shown to be faulty, to my knowledge. If someone can cite a source for such a conclusion, I would like to see it.

The California Condor is a sacred cow, the bird has been on the road to extinction for the last 1000 years if not longer. The environs were it lives has changed. The only reason its around is the massive amounts of money being spent on it. I don't think they even breed in the wild, or if they do, the eggs are taken and put in a lab. Its like the Atlantic Salmon Restoration Project, it CT. It's a black hole money wise, great for a brown trout angler like myself, because the big browns feed heavy on the smolts and a 10 or 8 olive Zonker works well in the fall. Very few salmon return for the numbers of smolts released. They guy that started it liked fishing Atlantic Salmon in Canada and they though they could reestablish the runs. On problem the race of fish that came this far south do not exist anymore and have not since before the Civil War. But they continue to spend the money on it, going on 40 years now. They would have done better with the Sea run Brown Trout, they stopped working on that because of money, back in the early 70's Salmon was sucking it up. They have fish(Sea Run Brown's) returning every year. Gee's we could have had winter trout fishing that people from all over would travel to the area just to fish. Oh well Atlantic Salmon like the Condor are sacred cows and well money be dammed, and you will have to give up your bullets too, because we say so, never mind it very well be junk science too. And hunters being the good guys they are in general will go along with it. We did with waterfowl. Its all BS.

HaYen, did you get my last PM? Again, your looking in to this is much appreciated. Tom

it is a question of the liberal left creating problems that don't exist, so that they can sell their leftist agenda to " change the world"...

other examples are the spotted owl 'extinction' panic, so they could block logging in the Pacific NW...

right along with Al Gore's Global Warming Scam....

No what needs to be extinct are liberals...we have way too many of them..

You're welcome. I haven't been able to check my PM's on a regular basis.

Have a great day!!!

The enviro-wackos will take any hint of a lead bullet problem and run with it. You can post all the studies to "document" a problem but who should really believe it? The climategate hoax has shown to what length these drones are willing to go to further their goal. Data has been altered, deleted and created to "prove" man made global warming, climate change or whatever name they choose to call it.

By the way, venison was thrown out by order of the MN. Dept. of Health. They ordered the remaining 12,000 pounds thrown out in 2008.

North Dakota threw out a boatload of venison last year also. Ridiculous!

UPDATE