Lead from carrion killing off California’s condors
When dairy farmers in California see the white Dodge pickup truck with the brown logo of the US Fish and Wildlife Service on the door, they know it’s time to bring out their dead. The biologists come by every couple of weeks to collect the bodies of stillborn calves and haul them to walk-in freezers strategically positioned around the state. Then, in the dark of night, they drag the corpses into clearings visible at dawn from the heights flown by California condors, a species that has battled back from the brink of extinction but is not yet trusted to feed itself. The massive birds now fly, nest and reproduce reliably outside zoos. But left to plan their own meals, they will swoop down on the carcasses of animals killed by hunters and, in gobbling the carrion feast, ingest chunks of the bullets that scientists now call the most persistent threat to the reestablishment of California condors in the wild: secondhand lead. “The science is irrefutable. There isn’t a shadow of a doubt that lead from ammunition is the leading cause of death and illness in the California condor,” said Judd Hanna, fired by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as member of the Fish and Game Commission for promoting a ban on lead ammunition in the condor habitat. Scientists cannot determine precisely how many of the deaths resulted directly from lead, but a recent study indicated 90 percent of condors in Arizona tested positive for lead during this year’s hunting season.

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