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- Thread starter spectr17
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OUTDOOR COLUMN: LEAD-CONDOR ISSUE AGAIN -- matthews-ONS -- 12jul06
FGC to be sued for not protecting condors from lead bullet residue
By JIM MATTHEWS
Outdoor News Service
The straight news lead would read: Conservation groups, claiming the California Fish and Game Commission (FGC) has not done everything required under state and federal law to protect endangered California condors from lead bullet residue, gave 60-day notice of their intent to sue the Commission to protect the huge vultures on Tuesday.
Lead poisoning remains a significant cause of mortality for condors, and most scientists believe the lead comes from bullet fragments the birds find while feeding on hunter-shot wildlife left in the field.
That's the sound bite, the news lead.
This is the truth: Between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's (USFWS) mismanagement of the condor research and recovery program, state wildlife officials' inability to bring anything to the condor conservation table, and unbelievable foot-dragging and denial by the hunter-conservation community, the California condor is likely doomed to extinction, the pace exacerbated by upcoming litigation.
If this were a murder trial, honest, thinking people who look at the entire body of (admittedly scanty but compelling) data available on lead poisoning and condors would convict lead bullets as the culprit. Is there doubt? Sure. It is reasonable doubt? Not really.
So that's not even the real issue. Most scientists have recognized that lead bullets and bullet fragments that wind up in wildlife carcasses or gut piles left in the field by hunters are the root, or at least a major component, of the lead problem in condors. This has been known for over a 20 years, and the evidence just keeps piling up.
Knowing enough and spreading that information is the key to solving the problem. That's what everyone seems to be missing here.
Do we know where birds are getting the bullet fragments? No, not really. We speculate.
After decades of intense and expensive study, we really don't have a clue what condors eat in the wild.
All information on condor food preferences is incidental to other work: someone reads that condors were seen in droves on whale carcasses in the 1800s, so we know they ate dead marine mammals washed up on beaches. They have been seen on cow and deer carcasses by ranchers and hunters throughout the late 1800s and most of this century. We have individual reports in recent years of condors feeding on a coyote carcass and most recently on hunter-shot ground squirrels.
Every condor in the world, practically, is wearing a radio transmitter. So why hasn't the USFWS sent out packs of young, healthy grad students to follow the birds around and document their food sources throughout the year? We could know what they eat, when, and what seasonal preferences or variations they have because of availability. We also could have narrowed down where we think the birds are getting the lead if we knew what types of dead wildlife they had been eating. Instead we guess.
Recently observers at Pinnacles National Monument saw condors feeding on hunter-shot ground squirrels and feared lead-poisoning. So the condors were trapped and tested. At least some of the birds did indeed have dangerous lead levels. But did these people collect the ground squirrel carcasses so they could be tested for lead? This would have given us definitive proof that shot varmints could be a significant source of lead poisoning. This is something some of us have suspected for years, without a shred of evidence other than a hunch. Not surprisingly, I can't find anyone who thinks the squirrel remains were tested or saved for testing. So all we have more interesting, suggestive, but inconclusive data.
This lack of solid USFWS data isn't helping. But neither is the hunter-conservation community and firearms industry. It really wasn't until a little over two years ago that these groups first weighed in. Lightly. Our big campaign effort was supposed to be research. We were going to pull together bullet fragmentation and penetration studies to quantify how much lead was left behind in wildlife we shot. I still haven't seen those studies on ground squirrels, coyotes, or wild hog gut piles, so we don't know if there's lead left behind in varmints or how much of it -- and why bother with wild hogs if we don't even know if condors eat them.
The California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) and the Fish and Game Commission, which sets regulations, have staff who merely complain about the lack of real condor data and quality scientific work. They use that as an excuse for their incompetence and to avoid doing anything constructive from their end.
Three sides of this equation -- the feds, the state, and the hunter community -- have agreed that a thorough education program for hunters, which could eliminate the problem entirely, was a key step. Agreeing and implementing are two different things.
The DFG has done a dismal job informing hunters, with sketchy and poor information in the hunting regulations, and almost no effort beyond that. I can remember only one press release on the issue from the DFG. The USFWS has never done a press release that was directed to the sporting community on the lead-condor issue. And even with all the recent publicity, the hunting and shooting press has almost completely avoided the issue. If all you read were the major hunting and gun magazines, you'd never know there was a lead-condor issue. Why? Because these publications are terrified about how some of their ammunition advertisers might construe the story. It has only been in the last year that any sporting publication (other than Western Outdoor News, which has published my stories) has touched the issue, and I can really only think of a single story.
From a practical standpoint, nothing is getting done.
So I understand the frustration of people at the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) who decided to file their intent to sue under the guise of protecting condors this week. But rather than help get the word out to hunters, rather than help direct the USFWS to do the right studies, they've chosen to sue the Fish and Game Commission. This is another stupid move that could have a disastrous effect on hunters, the very people needed in the condor-protection camp.
The NRDC and CBD keep insisting an anti-hunting bias is not driving this lawsuit -- and I mostly believe that -- but a hunting ban could be the net result. If the FGC doesn't respond to the notice, which it won't, the lawsuit could go before a judge who might just issue a temporary restraining order and close all hunting seasons in known condor range -- just to be prudent and error on the side of condors. How can anyone then tell sportsmen that stopping hunting wasn't the real goal? That would be a tough sell.
The simple problem is that everyone involved with this issue has been focusing on something other than implementing practical solutions to the condors' lead problem. There's also a huge leadership-management deficit, needless turf battles, people who see condors as a career, and petty egos on all sides.
I fear for the condor and all the common hunters who will become casualties in its wake.
FGC to be sued for not protecting condors from lead bullet residue
By JIM MATTHEWS
Outdoor News Service
The straight news lead would read: Conservation groups, claiming the California Fish and Game Commission (FGC) has not done everything required under state and federal law to protect endangered California condors from lead bullet residue, gave 60-day notice of their intent to sue the Commission to protect the huge vultures on Tuesday.
Lead poisoning remains a significant cause of mortality for condors, and most scientists believe the lead comes from bullet fragments the birds find while feeding on hunter-shot wildlife left in the field.
That's the sound bite, the news lead.
This is the truth: Between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's (USFWS) mismanagement of the condor research and recovery program, state wildlife officials' inability to bring anything to the condor conservation table, and unbelievable foot-dragging and denial by the hunter-conservation community, the California condor is likely doomed to extinction, the pace exacerbated by upcoming litigation.
If this were a murder trial, honest, thinking people who look at the entire body of (admittedly scanty but compelling) data available on lead poisoning and condors would convict lead bullets as the culprit. Is there doubt? Sure. It is reasonable doubt? Not really.
So that's not even the real issue. Most scientists have recognized that lead bullets and bullet fragments that wind up in wildlife carcasses or gut piles left in the field by hunters are the root, or at least a major component, of the lead problem in condors. This has been known for over a 20 years, and the evidence just keeps piling up.
Knowing enough and spreading that information is the key to solving the problem. That's what everyone seems to be missing here.
Do we know where birds are getting the bullet fragments? No, not really. We speculate.
After decades of intense and expensive study, we really don't have a clue what condors eat in the wild.
All information on condor food preferences is incidental to other work: someone reads that condors were seen in droves on whale carcasses in the 1800s, so we know they ate dead marine mammals washed up on beaches. They have been seen on cow and deer carcasses by ranchers and hunters throughout the late 1800s and most of this century. We have individual reports in recent years of condors feeding on a coyote carcass and most recently on hunter-shot ground squirrels.
Every condor in the world, practically, is wearing a radio transmitter. So why hasn't the USFWS sent out packs of young, healthy grad students to follow the birds around and document their food sources throughout the year? We could know what they eat, when, and what seasonal preferences or variations they have because of availability. We also could have narrowed down where we think the birds are getting the lead if we knew what types of dead wildlife they had been eating. Instead we guess.
Recently observers at Pinnacles National Monument saw condors feeding on hunter-shot ground squirrels and feared lead-poisoning. So the condors were trapped and tested. At least some of the birds did indeed have dangerous lead levels. But did these people collect the ground squirrel carcasses so they could be tested for lead? This would have given us definitive proof that shot varmints could be a significant source of lead poisoning. This is something some of us have suspected for years, without a shred of evidence other than a hunch. Not surprisingly, I can't find anyone who thinks the squirrel remains were tested or saved for testing. So all we have more interesting, suggestive, but inconclusive data.
This lack of solid USFWS data isn't helping. But neither is the hunter-conservation community and firearms industry. It really wasn't until a little over two years ago that these groups first weighed in. Lightly. Our big campaign effort was supposed to be research. We were going to pull together bullet fragmentation and penetration studies to quantify how much lead was left behind in wildlife we shot. I still haven't seen those studies on ground squirrels, coyotes, or wild hog gut piles, so we don't know if there's lead left behind in varmints or how much of it -- and why bother with wild hogs if we don't even know if condors eat them.
The California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) and the Fish and Game Commission, which sets regulations, have staff who merely complain about the lack of real condor data and quality scientific work. They use that as an excuse for their incompetence and to avoid doing anything constructive from their end.
Three sides of this equation -- the feds, the state, and the hunter community -- have agreed that a thorough education program for hunters, which could eliminate the problem entirely, was a key step. Agreeing and implementing are two different things.
The DFG has done a dismal job informing hunters, with sketchy and poor information in the hunting regulations, and almost no effort beyond that. I can remember only one press release on the issue from the DFG. The USFWS has never done a press release that was directed to the sporting community on the lead-condor issue. And even with all the recent publicity, the hunting and shooting press has almost completely avoided the issue. If all you read were the major hunting and gun magazines, you'd never know there was a lead-condor issue. Why? Because these publications are terrified about how some of their ammunition advertisers might construe the story. It has only been in the last year that any sporting publication (other than Western Outdoor News, which has published my stories) has touched the issue, and I can really only think of a single story.
From a practical standpoint, nothing is getting done.
So I understand the frustration of people at the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) who decided to file their intent to sue under the guise of protecting condors this week. But rather than help get the word out to hunters, rather than help direct the USFWS to do the right studies, they've chosen to sue the Fish and Game Commission. This is another stupid move that could have a disastrous effect on hunters, the very people needed in the condor-protection camp.
The NRDC and CBD keep insisting an anti-hunting bias is not driving this lawsuit -- and I mostly believe that -- but a hunting ban could be the net result. If the FGC doesn't respond to the notice, which it won't, the lawsuit could go before a judge who might just issue a temporary restraining order and close all hunting seasons in known condor range -- just to be prudent and error on the side of condors. How can anyone then tell sportsmen that stopping hunting wasn't the real goal? That would be a tough sell.
The simple problem is that everyone involved with this issue has been focusing on something other than implementing practical solutions to the condors' lead problem. There's also a huge leadership-management deficit, needless turf battles, people who see condors as a career, and petty egos on all sides.
I fear for the condor and all the common hunters who will become casualties in its wake.
Not like they are going to let us shoot copper jacketed steel core bullets. There has to be an alternative besides 2.00 lb inefective poison that could very well also kill the condors and the cattle/horses/deer well anything that really likes sweet grain or animals with bellys full of the stuff.
