Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters A good reason to use copper bullets

hasnt' caused a big issus all of these years to this point...

What a waste of money anyay.

And this goes for ducks and California Condors, too...

There is a movement afoot here, in the state of WA, to "reintroduce(?)" the CA Condor AND ban lead ammunition within the proposed release and habitat range of said birds...

maybe the lead particles sit in the gizzard for a long time. Maybe they seek out the lead particles (looking for bone fragments?)

A lot of the birds they recapture, they test for lead and treat them to "get the lead out". They have had several die due to lead poisoning.

alaCarte go to the US F&G condor website click on the field notes starting in 2002 thru 2008, additionally since 2002 copper has been elevated in the birds guess what they are going after when their done with lead? danny

The team immediately noticed the chick to be underweight and undersize and upon closer inspection foreign objects appeared to be lodged in it�s crop. The chick also was suffering from respiratory distress. It was decided to remove the chick from the nest and transport it to the LA Zoo for treatment. While in the zoo it regurgitated glass & plastic shards, poptops, bone, bark, leaves and other similar debris. For several days it seemed to be improving then it started to decline. On the 24th in one last attempt to save the chick, veterinarians performed surgery and it was during this procedure that they had to euthanize it, nothing more could be done.

The preliminary necropsy report from the pathology department at the Zoological Society of San Diego confirmed extensive and severe respiratory tract disease and a small perforation of the gastrointestinal track, possibly due to the foreign objects found in the chick.



Female condor 111 waits patiently (?) whilt biologist chekc the nest cave for trash debris. On the 26th, Deputy Project Leader Greg Austin, Wildlife Biologist Dan Tappe and Mike Clark from the LA Zoo hiked up to the nest cave to examine the nest for debris. The chicks mother, 111 was at the nest when they arrived. The biologists spoke to her as they came up so as not to surprise her and she moved outside and waited. The father, 125 arrived 15 minutes later as they were leaving. The cave floor was sifted through a screen and all that was found was a small piece of plastic and bits of bone.

On Saturday, July 19 male condor 267 was found dead, he had been released the previous month. A necropsy report determined the cause of death to be from a predator, most likely a coyote. The report also revealed the bird was in poor condition and this could have made him more susceptible to an attack. He had not been feeding regularly, even though food was readily available and in sight. All newly released condors are monitored closely, but it is not unusual for one of the release group not to be successful in
the wild. Sometimes a young bird will have to be trapped and returned to the zoo and occasionally one will die. The first year in the wild is the most perilous for the newly released condors.

On June 11 and 12 one of the largest trappings to date took place. Such a large scale operation was necessary in order to vaccinate all of the free flying birds in California against the West Nile Virus. Refuge Biologists along with biologists from the Ventana Wilderness Society and Pinnacles National Monument, keepers and vets from Santa Barbara Zoo and Los Angeles Zoo trapped over 30 birds. All the birds were vaccinated, tags and transmitters replaced and blood taken and tested for lead exposure. Both Mike Stockton, Supervising Wildlife Biologist for Hopper and Joe Burnett, Field Supervisor for Ventana were very pleased with the trapping, "Everyone worked hard and we got the job done."

Two birds were found to have elevated lead levels; 107 and a Big Sur bird 170 were transported to the Los Angeles Zoo to be chelated. Also taken to the Zoo were 202,who re injured his leg and 247 who had been observed limping in the weeks prior to the trapping. Both lead exposed birds were treated and appeared to be doing well when 170 was found dead in his pen at the Zoo. We are still awaiting a complete necropsy report to determine the cause of death.

"State and federal wildlife experts are asking hunters to help with the California condor recovery effort by taking voluntary steps to reduce the potential exposure of condors to lead ammunition. Two recently released reports independently conclude that lead ammunition is contributing to the high lead levels documented in some wild condors. Both reports conclude that more studies are needed to identify and remove all sources of lead contamination in the birds." excerpted from the California Department of Fish & Game June 6 news release. See Lead and California Condor Recovery.

Both male condors 202 and 238 were observed limping and were subsequently trapped and taken to the vets at the LA Zoo. 238 was x-rayed and found to have a broken hip socket. This injury will require surgery. This surgery is very rarely performed, most birds would be put down, but California condors are also rare. The vets have been conferring with vets in Europe, where this surgery has been performed. Condor 202 recovered quickly from a fracture of the fibula in his right leg. He was released back into the wild on May 28. It is thought that both condors may have fought with a golden eagle.

Sycamore,

Do you have a source for this information?

I'm really keen on learning more about it so I can try to find out if those "maybe's" are real. And what the Condors they're treating have been eating... A steady diet from lead-filled gut piles? A Condor is a HUGE bird (10 foot wingspan) and I wonder just how sensitive they are to lead fragments or #6 shot pellets...

I would really appreciate some info about where I can read more about the details of these studies and the birds that are dieing or being treated!

Thanks.

In prehistoric times, condors ranged from Canada to Mexico, across the southern United States to Florida, and on the east coast in New York. During this period, condors were a common resident of the Grand Canyon based on bones, feathers and eggshells found in caves where they nested. A dramatic range reduction occurred about 10,000 years ago, coinciding with the late Pleistocene extinction of large mammals such as mastodon, giant sloth, camels, and saber-toothed cats that condors fed on. By the time Europeans arrived in western North America, condors had retreated to a stronghold along the Pacific coast from British Columbia to Baja California. The birds managed to maintain a strong population perhaps due to large sea mammals that washed upon shore, however, the settlement of the west, shooting, poisoning from lead and DDT, egg collecting, and general habitat degradation began to take a heavy toll. Between the mid- 1880s and 1924, there were scattered reports of condors in Arizona with the last sighting near Williams Arizona in 1924. By the late 1930s, all remaining condors were found only in California and by 1982, the total population had dwindled to just 22 birds. The only hope was to begin captive breeding of California condors and to initiate reintroduction of the species. Reintroduction of captive bred condors began in 1992 in California, and 1996 in Arizona.


Program Goal:
In order to be downlisted from Endangered to Threatened, The Recovery Goals of the California Condor Program are as follows:

- Maintenance of at least 2 wild populations
- Maintenance of one captive population
- Each population must:
-number at least 150 individuals
-must contain at least 15 breeding pairs
-be reproductively self sustaining
-have a positive rate of population growth
- Non-captive populations must:
-be spatially disjunct and non-interacting
-contain descendents from each of the 14 founders