Condor lead poisoning persists, impeding recovery, says CU-UCSC study

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2012/06/25/condor-lead-poisoning-persists-impeding-recovery-says-cu-ucsc-study

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Condor lead poisoning persists, impeding recovery, says CU-UCSC study[/font]

June 25, 2012

[font size=3]The California condor is chronically endangered by lead exposure from ammunition and requires ongoing human intervention for population stability and growth, according to a new study led by the University of California, Santa Cruz, and involving the University of Colorado Boulder.

Since 1982, the condor population has increased from 22 to approximately 400, but only through intensive management including captive breeding, monitoring and veterinary care. The bird’s recovery has been deceptively successful as its primary threat -- poisoning from lead-based bullets ingested as fragments from carrion -- has gone largely unmitigated, according to the study.

“We will never have a self-sustaining wild condor population if we don’t solve this problem,” said lead author Myra Finkelstein, a research toxicologist at UC Santa Cruz. “Currently, California condors are tagged and monitored, trapped twice a year for blood tests and when necessary treated for lead poisoning in veterinary hospitals, and they still die from lead poisoning on a regular basis.”

…

The study, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that annually from 1997 to 2010, 20 percent of the California condors sampled suffered lead poisoning and needed chelation therapy, a metal detoxification process that also is used for children with lead poisoning. Cumulatively over the time period, nearly half of the population tested was poisoned by lead, with many birds suffering repeat poisoning within and across years.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1203141109 ? Not working yet…
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/06/19/1203141109.abstract

[OnlinePoker]

1. Any information on purposeful lead poisoning (aka shooting)

One of my primary charities is Operation Migration which is working to establish an Eastern Whooping Crane migratory population. From their June 7 field report:

"The eastern migratory and non-migratory Louisiana populations suffer even more from human predation. McConnell noted 11 cranes in the eastern and Louisiana populations have been shot in the last two years. Many of those cases are still unsolved. The most recent incident prior to the April 20 shooting in South Dakota was the January 2012 shooting of a male whooping crane in Knox County, Indiana. The crane was spotlighted and shot, according to FWS. Charges are pending against two men in their early twenties; Jason R. McCarter, 21, of Wheatland, and John C. Burke, 23, of Monroe City."

The problem is, in the past, courts have been very lenient to "hunters" who are killing Whoopers leveling fines of, in one case, $1 ( http://cs.birdwatchingdaily.com/brd/b/field_of_view/archive/2011/04/19/killers-of-whooping-crane-in-indiana-receive-probation-1-fine.aspx) Considering it costs well over $20,000 per crane to raise and train them on their first migration, the minimal punishment is discouraging.

Has the same thing occurred with Condors, and have perpetrators been prosecuted more strongly?

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. It certainly has happened

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/condor-shot009.html

[Kolesar]

3. That is a disturbing report

The 'holes in Kentucky were going to legalize shooting Sandhill Cranes.
Blood lust for slob hunters, in both cases