By KEVIN HOWE, Herald Staff Writer, Posted on Sat, Apr. 14, 2007
A decision on whether to ban lead bullets in all or part of California has been put off until June by the state Fish and Game Commission.
The commission, meeting in Bodega Bay on Friday, heard testimony on the proposal to eliminate use of bullets or buckshot containing lead to take big game in the state to protect scavenging California condors from getting lead poisoning by swallowing bullet fragments in carcasses or gut piles of animals shot by hunters.
The commission voted unanimously at its Feb. 2 meeting in Monterey to serve notice of its intent to amend hunting regulations for 2007-2010 with the aim of eliminating lead bullets in the California condor range.
In November, a consortium of environmental activists, including the Wishtoyo Foundation, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Natural Resources Defense Council, sued in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles seeking such a ban.
The plaintiffs cited studies showing that lead from bullets left in carcasses or gut piles from game animals is a major source of lead poisoning in the endangered birds.
The assertions were confirmed in August by scientists at the University of California-Santa Cruz who published an online study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology that examined and analyzed lead from rifle bullets and shotgun pellets.
The UC-Santa Cruz researchers used a "fingerprinting" technique based on unique isotope ratios found in different sources of lead. The technique enabled them to match lead in condor blood samples to lead in ammunition.
In February, Tejon Ranch Corp. announced that nonlead ammunition will be required for all hunting and predator control on its 270,000-acre Southern California ranch starting in 2008 to protect condors that forage there.
Friday's meeting opened questions about the proposed ban.
"What's next when we find the lead ban doesn't work?" asked former game warden Walt Mansell of the California Rifle and Pistol Association. "Copper is also toxic."
He said the initial ban could lead to banning hunting in the state to save the condor.
Advocates of the lead bullet ban are "making the condor a poster child, as they did the spotted owl to stop logging," Mansell said.
Mansell handed commission president Richard Rogers samples of copper-jacketed lead bullets and all-copper bullets.
Commissioner Jim Kellogg asked him if he could tell which contained lead.
"Not without cutting into it," Mansell said.
Jim Patterson, wildlife biologist at Pinnacles National Monument, presented a Power-Point lecture on the 19 condors released there since 2004.
Nearly all of them show much higher levels of lead in their bloodstreams since being released into the wild, he said. Not only condors, but bald eagles, golden eagles and ravens are subject to lead poisoning when they scavenge game carcasses.
X-rays of shot carcasses, Patterson said, showed that in all cases, lead bullets left small fragments inside. In 74 percent, more than 100 bullet fragments were found.
Eric Brunnemann, superintendent of Pinnacles National Monument, said rangers have been using unleaded copper bullets with "100 percent success" in eradicating non-native wild pigs.
"We've trapped or taken 300 animals," he said.
The National Park Service, he said, is "proactive with 'green' ammo." All of his rangers are using nonleaded bullets for practice.
Vic Desmond of the Arroyo Grande Sportsmen's Club took issue with statements that alternative ammunition is available to hunters.
"I'm not opposed to nonlead ammo," he said, "but it is not readily available."
It will take months for supply to catch up with demand, and small businesses will be hurt, he said. Assertions that nonleaded ammunition is common have been based on statistics that include bullets meant for police or military use only, not hunting, he said.
"Enforcement is a big issue," Desmond said. Game wardens will need equipment to evaluate bullets in the field. He urged the commission to wait until the issues are resolved.
Unleaded bullets aren't available, Commissioner R. Judd Hanna said, "because they're not mandated to be available."
That was true when lead was banned for waterfowl hunting, he said, and steel shot began to replace it on the shelves of sporting goods stores. He suggested the commission write a letter to Tejon Ranch asking its owners to begin implementing their lead bullet ban in time for this fall's deer hunting season, rather than wait until next year.
Glen Olson, executive director of the Audubon Society of California, said his group doesn't oppose hunting "in a biologically sound manner," and added that hunters "are extremely important" in wildlands management.
Condor recovery experts have systematically monitored lead exposure in the birds since 1997, during which time five condors died of lead poisoning -- one in California, one in Utah, and three in Arizona. An additional 26 suspected of being poisoned by bullets have received emergency chelation treatment to reduce toxic lead levels.
Another issue the commission should resolve, Kellogg said, is defining condor territory.
"What is the condor area?" he asked.
The commission is considering alternative actions on the lead bullet issue: making no change in current regulations, banning them statewide, or two proposals banning them within specific deer hunting areas.
The lead ban would apply to centerfire cartridge bullets, muzzeloading balls, shotgun slugs and buckshot used to take any big game or used to take nongame animals. The ban does not include rimfire cartridge bullets, such as the commonly used .22 rimfire.
Kevin Howe can be reached at 646-4416 or khowe@montereyherald.com.
