CA Lead Ban Update – Too much
OK, so despite my oft-repeated support for getting lead ammo out of the condor range (and out of the environment altogether), the State Fish and Game Commission has gone over the top by adding rimfire ammunition to the list of banned ammo in the Condor range.
This article in the Sacramento Bee, written by a reporter who obviously has no clue about hunting or the condor issue, describes the most recent action by the commission. Unfortunately, the article contains several innacuracies, including the following totally false and misleading comment:
The endangered condor was nearly driven to extinction by hunting and the effects of another man-made toxin, the pesticide DDT. With those risks diminished, a leading threat to its survival today is lead ammunition.
First of all, while a lot of folks did shoot condors out of ignorance, it wasn’t hunting. Secondly, a big reason for the decline of the condor is that its ecological niche, cleaning up the carcasses of large mammals disappeared with the near extinction of tule elk, and the extirpation of the grizzly in CA. The demise of the whale population, followed by the death of the whaling industry also removed another critical food source.
The fact is that only a very few condor deaths are possibly attributable to the ingestion of lead, and there is, as yet, NO proof that the lead that killed them came from hunters’ bullets. The very research used by the lead-ban advocates admits that there’s no verifiable correlation… although there is, certainly, a reasonable possibility that some of the lead did come from ammunition, it’s hardly a “major cause” of condor mortality.
The condor researchers have also shown that condors aren’t eating small game or upland bird carcasses. Lead from rimfires and shotgun shells does not pose a threat to condors.
Secondly, another reason that the initial plan excepted rimfires from the ban is that there is no non-toxic alternative for rimfire ammunition… so including this ammunition in the ban is essentially a ban on an entire class of firearms in this zone.
In the long run, I definitely agree that lead needs to phase out of our ammo boxes, but banning it all at once under the false pretense of “saving the condor” is a slap in the face to all hunters. This is wrong, and stinks of an anti-hunting agenda (despite my early resistance to conspiracy theory).
It’s critical here for sportsmen to stand up and speak out. Make our voices heard in Sacramento! Get on the phone, write letters and emails, and don’t let up. Outdoor bloggers need to get on this too, both in CA and outside of the state.
THIS IS A CALL TO ACTION!
It’s time for California hunters to start taking action regarding the lead ammo ban. With the recent decision by the California Fish & Game Commision to ban lead, including 22 and other rimfire cartridges for hunting, we can not ignore this any longer. As far as I’m concerned, this has nothing to do with the Condor. It’s a back door approach to outlaw hunting in California. Hunters do more for Wildlife Conservation than any other group in the state through the purchase of Hunting Licenses that fund the Fish & Game Dept. and Game Wardens. I propose that we hit the Fish & Game Dept. where it hurts by refusing to buy hunting licenses as long as this lead ban is in place. How else are we going to fight it? Hundreds of thousands of dollars are paid each year to the Calif. Fish & Game Dept. Why should we fund a Dept. that chooses a path against our beliefs?
December 9th, 2007 at 8:37 am
Art, thanks for the comment and I definitely agree that it’s time for hunters to get active in the preservation and protection of our sport.
However, a general boycott of hunting licenses, while it would definitely be effective in an ideal situation, is not likely to fly. You’d have to convince a huge majority of hunters in this state to stop hunting for a season… or longer. I hate to throw water on an idea (an idea I’d considered as well) before the spark even takes off, but I think we need to look at more realistic and workable approaches.
Here’s a thought. At the Fish and Game Commission hearings where the lead ban was being discussed, there were seldom more than 20 or 30 people in attendance. In fact, the lead ban almost went all the way through the process the first time before some hunters finally took enough notice and care to attend a meeting and speak up. Fortunately, this happened in time to stall the proceedings and let the hunting community offer at least a vocal argument. Even then, the meeting attendance never got much larger. Most hunters sat back, confident that the NRA and the small contingent of grassroots activists would fight and win the battle for us.
So, instead of sitting back and letting someone else do our fighting for us, maybe we need to get hunters out to these meetings…wherever they are. I’m not talking about 50 or 100 hunters, but a thousand or more. And not at just one meeting, but at every meeting until our voices are heard.
Look, the anti-hunters, anti-gunners, and environmentalists have this stuff down. They show up, make a scene, and essentially raise hell until someone finally tosses them a bone. They don’t take anything lying down. We can take a page from their playbook and do the same thing.
I’ve heard too many hunters complain, but those complaints are usually made to other hunters. What I haven’t seen is hunters getting active. “The meetings are too far away,” they say. “The meeting is on a week night,” they say.
The excuses have got us where we are now.
December 9th, 2007 at 10:52 am
Thanks for blogging about this, Phillip.
I’m with you: Phasing out lead is probably a good idea. But responsible elected and appointed officials understand that phasing out something that’s ubiquitous means giving manufacturers time to find alternatives. I know you’ve been planning to test non-lead cartridges yourself, so you’ve obviously been braced for this.
But the .22 lead ban is crazy. It doesn’t make sense. Funny thing is, that’s a move I would’ve expected from the Legislature, where there’s less expertise about hunting; not from the Fish and Game Commission, which should be a little more knowledgeable. I just don’t get it.
You hit the nail on the head about how we need to react to it, to. Hunters have to pay attention to what our elected and appointed officials are doing, and we have to be ready to act when things like this happen. It’s not enough to let the NRA do our job for us, particularly considering the NRA isn’t as popular among California government types as it is in other states.
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