It's a thrilling experience to see a California condor flying over the Big Sur coastline or at Pinnacles National Monument. The giant birds sweep across the sky while white triangular patches on their wings' undersides flash in the sun. Shivers run up your spine.

But in spending the past several years writing about the heroic effort to save our largest bird, there are two disquieting words I have heard all too often: lead poisoning.

Lead poisoning was the main reason that by 1982 this majestic bird's population had plummeted to only 22 condors. And lead poisoning continues to this day as the condor recovery program's greatest obstacle.

Condors eat only dead animals, and the birds can inadvertently consume poisonous lead-bullet fragments found in hunter-shot game. It was lead that forced the capture of the last wild condor in 1987. Nevertheless, 20 years later, many hunters are still using lead ammunition — and released condors continue to die.

Now there is a chance to make a much needed change to protect the condor and other wildlife. The California Fish and Game Commission (www.dfg.ca.gov) is currently considering whether to require the use of non-lead bullets for big game hunting. The commission is scheduled to vote on the ban next week. It's an idea whose time has come.

When a lead bullet slams into a game animal, it shatters into scores and sometimes hundreds of highly toxic pieces. Biologist Grainger Hunt showed me dozens of X-rays he had taken

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of hunter-shot deer. A typical black-and-white image revealed an astonishing sight: Scattered among the deer's shadowy ribs and vertebrae were more than 200 brilliant white particles of lead. "This 'lead snowstorm' spreads widely from the wound site," Hunt said. Consuming even one of these tiny fragments can poison a condor, other wildlife or even hunters.

In hiking with biologists to back-country flight pens and remote wilderness areas, I came to realize that the 135 condors now released in the western U.S. are not truly free. Biologists must focus much of their attention on an intensive management program aimed at preventing or treating lead poisoning.

Though varmint control by ranchers also spreads lead into the environment, it is considered a relatively minor factor in condor poisoning because the birders prefer larger mammals such as deer and pigs to coyotes or squirrels.

Released birds have to be regularly trapped and have their blood tested for lead exposure. Condors with high lead levels have to be confined and injected twice daily with a chemical that binds with lead and carries it out of their bodies. Dozens of condors have gone through this expensive medical treatment, known as chelation. Some poor birds have been poisoned several times and needed multiple chelation treatments. Despite biologists' best efforts, some condors suffer long and horrible deaths by starvation when lead poisoning paralyzes their digestive systems.

The condor cannot fully recover until the lead bullet issue is solved. The solution lies with sport hunters switching to non-lead ammunition.

Although it was clear as early as 1984 that condors were dying from lead, skeptics have questioned whether bullets were the poisoning source. Never mind that biologists have been finding lead-bullet fragments in the digestive tracks of poisoned condors for years, and that lead poisoning episodes spike during hunting season. Last year, a study from the University of California-Santa Cruz looked at the specific "fingerprint" of the lead isotope composition found only in lead bullets and discovered that it matched the lead in the blood of condors.

There is no doubt.

While it's true that alternative ammunition is more expensive, bullets are a minor part of a hunting trip's costs. Nevertheless, California would do well to replicate an Arizona program that provides coupons for free alternative ammunition with the purchase of a hunting license. Subsidizing or even giving away the alternative ammunition will ease the transition away from lead bullets.

Switching to non-lead ammunition also protects other wildlife. In addition, it could benefit hunters. Bill Heinrich at the Peregrine Fund described a recent study in which he took several deer that had been shot with lead bullets to butcher shops and had the meat prepared for eating. The packaged venison steaks — exactly what a hunter would take home to cook — were then X-rayed.

Some of those steaks still contained tiny lead fragments. Heinrich, a hunter himself, said, "I wish hunters knew what they are feeding to their families. After seeing those X-rays, I'll never use lead bullets again."

Transitioning to non-lead ammunition is good for condors, it's good for other wildlife and it's good for humans. The time has come to restrict the use of toxic lead bullets and let the condor fly free.

John Moir of Santa Cruz is author of "Return of the Condor: The Race To Save Our Largest Bird From Extinction."

For information on condors, see http://returnofthecondor.com.