Solutions to toxic lead
The story broke first in The Pinnacle last week. Most of the
California Condors released in the backcountry at Pinnacles
National Monument had been observed feeding on the carcasses of
ground squirrels shot in a field near San Lucas and left to
rot.
So what?
Solutions to toxic lead
The story broke first in The Pinnacle last week. Most of the California Condors released in the backcountry at Pinnacles National Monument had been observed feeding on the carcasses of ground squirrels shot in a field near San Lucas and left to rot.
So what?
The problem is not the squirrels. Condors are the rarest of scavengers, with just 44 birds left in the wild in California. They live on carcasses. The problem may be with the tiny fragments of bullets that may still have been in the squirrels.
Most birds ingest hard objects, which lodge in an organ called the gizzard. Anyone who has ever prepared a chicken is familiar with the hard little muscle. Without teeth, birds have adapted this special organ to grind food at the beginning of the digestive process.
What better gizzard grit than a chunk of soft metal – lead? But lead is toxic, and when it does lodge within a bird’s digestive tract, an inevitable spiral begins. A fragment of lead no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence is enough to incapacitate a condor. The road to death is slow and agonizing. Vision begins to fade. Coordination evaporates. Finally, the contractions that move food through the digestive tract cease, and the bird, stuffed to bursting with food that slowly rots in the crop at the bottom of its throat, starves to death. That is, if predators don’t take the animal first.
The fate of the birds observed feeding near San Lucas is certain. They are destined for recapture and testing. If any of them test positive, they will be taken to Los Angeles for a long and painful treatment regimen.
There are several reasons why we should care.
First, the rare birds inspire rarer awe. They are throwbacks to a time before humans came to California, scavengers who feasted on mastodons and saber-toothed cats. To see one soaring – the largest bird in North America – always elicits a gasp.
Any unnecessary contact with humans can habituate the birds to people, leading them to seek further association with humans. The attempt to reestablish a self-sustaining wild population of the birds is thwarted when this occurs. After the last wild condor was captured in an attempt to save the birds through captive breeding, some of the first birds released were so used to human contact that they hung around fast food joints.
Finally, this kind of intervention and treatment is enormously expensive.
And none of it had to happen.
There are at least two solutions, one simple and the other quite a bit more complex.
The complex solution is one that’s been advanced. That would be to legislate lead ammunition out of use, at least in condor country. That restriction was successfully implemented in shotgun ammunition used for waterfowl, since their populations were being affected by the lead shot they swallowed off marsh bottoms. Steel shot is not as dense, so it has less reach – meaning its effective range is less. But duck hunters – some of the most dedicated conservationists in North America – have adapted.
A good friend who hunts larger game – wild pigs mostly – began using tungsten projectiles years ago, and he raves about the new ammunition. The problem is high-tech points are not commonly available on the small bullets typically used on animals like ground squirrels and rabbits.
It certainly will become available some day, but ammunition restrictions at this point might only invite people to ignore the law.
Which brings us to the simple solution. We’re all big boys and big girls, and mama don’t pick up after us no more. So pick up your own mess. Haul your carcasses and bury or dispose of them where they won’t become condor chow. How hard can that be?
Leaving poisoned food on the table is no favor to wildlife.
