Lead Ban Chronicles – Three More Condors Reported Dead From Lead
Tales from Tejon will continue shortly. Just waiting on some photos right now. It was a great time, with a bunch of great guys… but details will have to wait.
In the meantime…
Just got this from the Peregrine Fund in my email this morning. Let me ask you to read it completely before you comment, just so you’ll know what’s actually in the report and what conclusions they’re drawing. Of course then, once you’re educated, have at it!
Contact
Lynda Lambert, Arizona Game and Fish Department, (602) 789-3203
Jeff Humphrey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, (602) 242-0210, Ext. 222
Susan Whaley, The Peregrine Fund, (208) 362-8274
Scott Sticha, Bureau of Land Management, (435) 688-3303NEWS RELEASE
For immediate release
February 22, 2010Contact
Susan Whaley, The Peregrine Fund, (208) 362-8274
Lynda Lambert, Arizona Game and Fish Department, (623) 236-7203
Mark Hadley, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, (801) 538-4737
Recent condor mortalities used to expand conservation effortsBOISE, IDAHO — After 3 years without a confirmed mortality from lead poisoning, three California condors have recently died from the biggest challenge to the species’ recovery. The condors, including a female and her chick from the previous year, were recovered by The Peregrine Fund.
Necropsies to determine the cause of death were performed at the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research. Testing confirmed the presence of lead fragments in the digestive tracts of all three birds. Lead shuts down the condors’ digestive system, which leads to starvation, weakness and death.
“While the deaths of a breeding female and her wild-hatched chick are a significant loss, condor conservation has been gaining ground since lead poisoning was first identified as a leading cause of mortality and we began to educate hunters about the effects of spent lead on condors,” said biologist Chris Parish, head of The Peregrine Fund’s condor recovery operation in Arizona. “But, as the condor recovery program progresses, new challenges have been identified.”
The three dead birds had been outfitted with tracking equipment that allowed field biologists to monitor daily movements. In recent years, that radio tracking data has identified increased use of southern Utah as a major foraging area for the flock.
“When we first reintroduced condors to northern Arizona in 1996, the birds primarily foraged closer to home,” said Chris Parish. “Now that we have observed the condors expanding their range into Utah and foraging more frequently outside of the local release area, conservation partners are working with Utah and its hunters to reduce the amount of spent lead ammunition available to condors in gut piles and carcasses left in the field.”
The Peregrine Fund tries to capture all condors twice yearly to test for lead exposure, the leading cause of condor death. Birds with high blood lead concentrations are treated with chelation therapy to reduce the lead in their system. Condors are scavengers and research in the last five years has proven that they consume tiny fragments of lead in the remains of gunshot animals.
To aid condor conservation, the Arizona Game and Fish Department started a non-lead ammunition outreach program in 2003 to hunters drawn for hunts in the condor’s core range. Surveys show that 85 percent of hunters took voluntary measures in 2009 to reduce the amount of available spent lead ammunition in the condor’s core range.
Now the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources is implementing a similar program for hunters on the Zion unit in southwestern Utah.
“We’ve started educating our hunters about the effect that lead ammunition has on condors,” said Jim Parrish, nongame avian coordinator for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. “The next thing we’re going to do is give everyone who hunts on the Zion unit a coupon for a free box of non-lead ammunition.”
“There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel, so we’re modeling the Utah program after Arizona’s non-lead effort,” continued Jim Parrish. “Utah’s sportsmen are conservation-minded. We’re confident they’ll step up to the challenge and that our program, combined with the highly successful program in Arizona, will keep the condor population healthy and allow it to grow.”
Condor conservation partners include The Peregrine Fund, Arizona Game and Fish Department, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, Utah Wildlife in Need, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Forest Service.
For more information on condor conservation and non-lead ammunition, visit www.peregrinefund.org or www.azgfd.gov/condor.
DID YOU KNOW?
- By 1982, just 22 California Condors remained on Earth. Captive breeding programs were established in the 1980s.
- California Condors now live in the wild in Arizona, Utah, California and Mexico.
- The condor is the largest flying land bird in North America. The birds can weigh up to 26 pounds and have a wingspan up to 9½ feet.
- Condors reach maturity at about six years of age. They usually produce one egg every other year.
- Prior to reintroduction, the last wild condor in Arizona was sighted just south of the Grand Canyon in 1924.
- There are now 74 condors in Arizona and Utah.
- Visitors at the Grand Canyon and Vermilion Cliffs may be able to observe the birds, especially during the spring and summer.
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Phillip –
When does preservation (something not found in nature) stop and conservation (something very natural, based on the cycles of life) begin?
I’ve heard how important it is for species to be carried on, but when does it become a time when it’s appropriate that one species goes extinct and it’s just considered a cycle of life?
When condors were at their peak, the Spanish just arrived, there were still grizzly bears in California and there were tons of carrion for condors to eat. Now, whatever carrion available is quickly taken by coyotes, or cattlemen who just don’t want dead cattle laying around drawing more coyotes to the ranch.
How does a bird that only produces “one egg every other year” survice on its own, even without the lead poisoning problem?
As a devout conservationist, which sometimes entails using some preservationist tactics for a few years (and only for a few years: to test the viability of survivability), I was horrified when twenty years ago I read that some were ready and willing to see the condor go the way of other animals and birds that have outlived their time. Nowadays, having seen so much money put into saving one species over others that evidently thrive while the condor dies, I’m not so sure…it’s getting like the crazy efforts by lawyers to stop trout fish stocks in lakes because of frogs, that continue to disappear, even with the loss of stocking that would have put more money in the coffers of Fish and Game.
The California condor is a prehistoric bird that has outlived its time, just like Neanderthal man. If not, it’d be laying a covey’s worth of eggs like quail. Or, it’d come under the success of the other prehistoric bird that survives because it pays: chickens.
…And there is another prehistoric animal that survives because of Ted Turner’s efforts that shows that it pays, and therefore it stays: the American bison…no longer endangered as it was–can the California condor do the same?
BTW probably the best research on lead poisoning was that done in Montana on ravens that recorded extreme spikes of lead poisoning during hunting season, and again, in early spring when ravens fed on the lead fragment impregnated leftover guts previously snowed in and frozen in during winter.
Cheers,
Cork
February 22nd, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Phillip, I’m pleased as punch to read how respectfully the Peregrine Fund speaks of voluntary methods, and hunting, in general.
I’m crossing my fingers that this will work for the Idaho birds, and it’s great to see them expanding their territory.
Cork, I have a couple of questions: Why is it okay to spend so much on trout stocking and not on condors? If it were a strictly business decision, it might even be better to build toll roads with the money, instead of stocking trout, so I don’t see a completely financial reason. Also, if you are convinced that condors should be allowed to go extinct, why should we help trout from being extirpated in places where they don’t naturally occur?
I don’t mean any disrespect in my questions; I just don’t see a reason to favor trout over condors (and I’m a flyfisherman). Perhaps we should be encouraging more and more big game in condor range, so they can have more to eat, instead of just letting them die off…
February 22nd, 2010 at 3:23 pm
Josh –
Great questions!
RE: Why is it okay to spend so much on trout stocking and not on condors? If it were a strictly business decision, it might even be better to build toll roads with the money, instead of stocking trout, so I don’t see a completely financial reason.
What you’re talking about is apples and oranges: we’re talking self-supportive conservation (very important in this present down economy, and state so heavily in debt), not government money drawn from non-DFG supportive cycles. Trout stocking draws more fishing licenses fees, and therefore DFG has more money to use to do actual habitat improvement, or whatever related to wildlife. Toll roads do nothing except increase more revenue for the Dept. of Transportation. If anything the many monies have been syphoned off to feed the road systems.
RE: Also, if you are convinced that condors should be allowed to go extinct, why should we help trout from being extirpated in places where they don’t naturally occur?
The trout aren’t being extirpated naturally. They’re only fished out in areas that were sights for put and take fishing. Brook trout populations we have in the Sierras were brought into the Sierras more than 100 years ago, and brought delight to hikers and were self-supporting. The key word is naturally—if you improve the habitat, will the species survive and not only that, thrive? For trout yes. For condors, no.
re: I just don’t see a reason to favor trout over condors (and I’m a flyfisherman). Perhaps we should be encouraging more and more big game in condor range, so they can have more to eat, instead of just letting them die off…
I agree, but the hunters that provide the money to keep those game populations high in condor areas have been dwindling, so too the monies derived from those hunters. Trout provide three ingredients toward their survival: fishing fees, natural viability, and reproductive numbers that can easily fill a lake if not overfished…not even talking about restocking. Or, in the Condor non-lead area, pigs provide tons of cash and yet, none of that DFG taken money goes toward improving pig populations, yet pig populations are exploding—now that’s beyond self-supporting: where does all that money go?
Condors on the other hand survive only as a continued drain on financial resources. When I was corpsman we used to call my response “triage”. That means when you’ve got someone with a bullet in his head, and another who has bullet in the chest (both very grave, but not the same), you work on the one with the chest wound, because there’s a very good likelihood the one with the bullet in their chest will survive. And if the one with the headwound is still alive when you’re done with the chestwound, and you get to help and they survive, so much the better. The key is that you don’t sacrifice the chestwound to save the headwound which likely won’t survive.
I used the trout as an example of a species that does well and provides the wherewithall towards its own survival. There a number of othe species that do well when they bring their own money, such as deer, waterfowl, etc.
Condors, instead, survive only because of monies either siphoned off from other programs or are only supplied by small public donations. The California condor doesn’t pay its way, and in places where non-lead bullets are used, it actually drops the number of hunters willing to hunt there because of how prohibitive non-lead cartridges…and so, lack of interest in hunting and lack of dollars gathered from hunters that could have helped the condor.
BTW, Josh, when was the last time you’ve seen a condor in the wilds? I saw one in 1977 when I first started hunting in California. In a bad economy, the first to go are those programs that don’t seem viable, and comparing a trout or duck that reproduces to efficiently to a condor that needs to have its egg removed else run the risk of having momma crushing those eggs looks like throwing good money toward a population that’s likely going to go extinct anyway: $5 million dollars a year to keep the Condor population unnaturally alive? Good article here: Scripps News Article on Condor Cost
The news is always ready to talk about the extinction of species, but we’ve had extinction of species for millions of years, and in its place has come either a complete new and more viable one, or an increase of much more presently available viable ones. Perfect example, look at the black bear population that has exploded, and overtaken what were historically grizzly bear commanded ares of California.
Now, if people really wanted to save something from extinction, how about reintroducing the grizzly bear into California, like they did the wolf in to the Rockies? I’d love to see how many people really feel about keeping a species from going extinct when that species can rip them in half and make nice morsel of them…
…The more we pay attention to conservation in terms of health to the overall ecosystem, and not just an emotional response to avoidance of death, then the more effectively our conservation efforts will succeed. The role the California condor had in cleaning up after dead wooly mammoths and the leavings of big bears, has been taken over by the turkey vulture, whenever those turkey vultures survive close brush wit a windpower turbine…
February 22nd, 2010 at 4:23 pm
What I was most heartened about by that press release was the fact that the Peregrine Fund 1) wasn’t declaring a failure on Arizona’s part and 2) was praising Utah for following Arizona’s lead (LEED, not LED – no strange pun intended).
Arizona used persuasion and free ammo; California, under threat of lawsuit, used the cudgel of law and zero incentive to hunters. If we’d all been given a box or two of ammo here, perhaps more of us would’ve sighted in our guns with the non-lead and had better experiences in the field.
As for whether the condor is worthy of all this protection: I would tend to agree with you in principle, Cork, that it’s problematic to be putting all this money – even private money – into a species that experts agree cannot survive without our assistance. But the train has left the station. A lifetime of covering politics tells me this is not a winnable debate.
February 22nd, 2010 at 8:12 pm
I would have to agree with Holly, Cork!
In the beginning I was not at all impressed with the Copper Bullet’s performance, did not like being forced (under legal threat) to acquiesce to the States authoritarian dictates, and wanted to see more concrete scientific evidence that Lead Bullet’s were in fact, the direct cause for the problems facing the Condor.
But, now that the damage has already been done and when it all really comes down to it, CALIFORNIA HUNTERS just simply did not get off of their “lazy duffs” and demand a more fair shake than what we have gotten from the State.
O.K. now that we are here lets just try and recover a little of the damaged ground, and I believe that the taxpayers will ultimately see (and decide) that as Cork quotes from Mr.Ted Turner, “If It Pay’s It Stays”!
February 23rd, 2010 at 4:47 am
I recently read an Audobon report that indicated that the current condor population was little more than an outdoor zoo, almost entirely relying on human intervention for survival. The 2006 figures indicate it costs somewhere around $74,000 per bird per year to ensure survival.
At some point these birds will be fiscally prohibitive.
February 23rd, 2010 at 8:06 am