DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Tell me this isn’t the dumbest thing you’ve heard all day.

The California Condor was so close to extinction in the mid-1980s that the remaining 22 (!) were captured, bred in captivity, and have been slowly reintroduced into the wild.

Yet they’re still highly endangered due to lead poisoning: hunters shoot big game in condor territory, leaving carcasses behind. The carcasses are full of lead bullet fragments. Condors eat the carcasses, and the lead, and then die.

So on the one hand, the government is willing to spend a pile of money ($40MM) on condor breeding and monitoring, but not willing to give the re-released birds a fair chance at survival, e.g. in 2005 the Fish and Game Commission rejected a petition to phase out lead ammunition.

I’m not a hunter, but I understand that alternatives to lead ammunition exist. Why not ban the lead? If we care enough about not letting the condor go extinct, surely we can face down the NRA and whoever else is fighting the ammunition phase-out. Nobody is trying to ban hunting… just the lead bullets.

More info at SaveTheCondors.org and the new Get the Lead Out campaign, courtesy the Center for Biological Diversity.