[CPEO-MEF] MUNITIONS: "Will Lead Bullets Finally Kill Off the California Condor?"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Will Lead Bullets Finally Kill Off the California Condor?

by Ted Williams
Yale Environment 360
May 19, 2013

The California condor, the largest bird in North America, was saved  
from extinction by a captive breeding program that increased its  
numbers in the wild. But now the condor is facing a new and  
pernicious threat - the lead from bullets used by game hunters. by  
ted williams

It was almost like watching wooly mammoths parting tusk-high  
savannah. In the gusty air above the Grand Canyon relicts from the  
Ice Age wheeled and dipped. Through my binoculars I could make out  
numbers on the wing tags of these California condors, North America’s  
largest and arguably most endangered bird.

By 1982 only 22 remained on the planet. Then in a decision that  
outraged a large element of the environmental community, the U.S.  
Fish and Wildlife Service announced that all condors would be  
evacuated from the wild and bred in captivity. Friends of the Earth  
founder David Brower pled for "death with dignity." But in 1993 the  
Peregrine Fund, a conservation organization, took on captive  
breeding, and the program proved a stunning success. After only three  
years, condor releases started in northern Arizona.

...

For the entire article, see
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/ 
will_lead_in_bullets_finally_kill_off_california_condor/2647/

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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