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Will California's condors be unleaded?
I’m having a hard time with this post. The issue seems so obvious, so clearly-cut, that there can’t possibly be much left for me to say. Lead bullets poison people in firing ranges, animals in the wild, and the environment in both – so we ought to stop using them. Right?
Not according to the NRA.
There are only about 300 California Condors left in existence (about half of those are in captivity), and lead shot is the biggest continued threat to their survival. The birds end up consuming the contaminated ammo when they’re eating from carcasses left behind by hunters, which causes lead poisoning. One condor recently died of lead poisoning, and other “wild” condors have to be captured and treated for lead poisoning regularly. A bill to restrict the use of lead shot within condor country (not to ban lead shot altogether, which is what makes the most sense to me) passed the state’s legislature and is on Governor Schwarzenegger’s desk.
But the Governor is in the NRA’s pocket on this one. They claim that there’s no scientific evidence that lead is a threat to the birds. Worse, they claim that the expense of having to use non-leaded ammo would force many hunters to stop hunting, which “will have terrible consequences on wildlife management practices.” (Sounds an awful lot like the claims of bar and restaurant owners when smoking bans are being debated, doesn’t it?) When the state’s Fish and Game commissioner released a document outlining the threat to condors from lead shot, Senator Dennis Hollingsworth organized a letter to be signed by 33 other NRA-supporters urging the Governor to, er, terminate the commissioner’s term.
Three days later, the commissioner resigned – due, he said, to pressure from the Governor’s office.
So like I said, this one should be opened and shut. But it isn’t, because Governor Schwarzenegger must decide between protecting his NRA cronies and protecting the dwindling population of a bird he himself chose to represent his state:
In a nod to the condor's magnificence, Schwarzenegger chose the condor as the symbol of California on the state quarter. The governor now has another choice to make - whether the condor will remain California's symbol, or disappear again from California's skies.
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