Hollister
– The California Fish and Game Commission will decide in June
whether big game hunters in San Benito County can continue to use
lead bullets.
Hollister – The California Fish and Game Commission will decide in June whether big game hunters in San Benito County can continue to use lead bullets.
Jim Petterson, a wildlife biologist at Pinnacles National Monument, provided testimony before the commission at an April 13 hearing in Bodega Bay. Petterson said he provided information he collected from the park’s condor population over the past three years to show that ammunition is the main pathway for lead poisoning in condors.
Petterson said that pig, deer and coyote carcasses and gut piles, which condors often feast on, can contain more than 100 fragments of lead bullets.
He said it is not only a risk to the condor population, but also to the hunters who eat the meat of their kills.
“I think we need to address the presence of lead in the environment,” Petterson said. “We’ve done that as a society in gas and paint.”
