Get the lead out: Removing the poisonous metal from bullets and shotgun pellets is the only way to save the highly endangered California Condor, according to a scientific review released today. Otherwise, one of the nation's most expensive and controversial efforts to save a species from extinction may fail. The report also recommends that hunters be encouraged to kill more wild game and pigs to create the carcasses on which the condors feed.
The condor--North America's largest bird, with a 3-meter wingspan--was nearly extinct when government biologists captured the last few wild birds in the early 1980s. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service planned to raise the giant scavengers in zoos and then release the birds back into the wild. Many critics predicted that the plan--which has since cost more than $45 million--would quickly fail.
The good news is that it hasn't, according to a major independent review panel assembled by the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU), a leading bird science group. The condor recovery program "has achieved success beyond what many imagined possible," concludes the panel, which was convened at the request of the conservation group Audubon California and led by avian ecologist Jeffrey Walters of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg. There are now 150 captive condors in zoos and another 150 soaring free through the skies of California, Arizona, Utah, and Baja California, Mexico.
The bad news is that further progress isn't possible under the current program, the panel says. The birds "survive in nature only through constant and costly human assistance and intervention," the report says. Monitoring, feeding, breeding, and protecting the birds costs about $5 million annually, the report notes. But more than 10% of the wild adults still die each year, meaning that the population is not self-sustaining. One of the deadliest culprits is lead, which the birds ingest while feeding on wild pigs and other animals killed by hunters.
As a result of that problem, "the program has reached a crossroads," the report concludes. "Progress toward recovery is not sustainable under current conditions because the reintroduction of more condors simply increases the costs required to keep wild birds alive rather than improving the viability of the wild populations."
To improve the condor's chances, the panel calls for an immediate ban on the use of lead shot in the areas where the condor lives, preferably to be followed by a similar national ban. It also calls for federal and state agencies to encourage hunters to get out and kill more deer, pigs, and other wildlife in the condor's range. "Eliminating the threat of lead must be accomplished while simultaneously promoting sport hunting for large game," the report says, in part to ensure that the birds don't have to rely on costly feeding programs forever. The report also calls for creating a single new federal office and an independent scientific panel to oversee the condor program and more study into the best ways of breeding the birds and teaching them to feed and survive in the wild.
Those recommendations are likely to be far less controversial than the proposed lead-shot ban. The National Rifle Association and hunting groups vociferously opposed but failed to stop efforts by California and a few other states to limit the use of lead shot. And hunters aren't likely to embrace any new proposal for a national ban, predicts Andrew Page of the Humane Society of the United States in Washington, D.C., which supports the idea. Although pro-hunting groups "have actively tried to discredit the science that shows lead ammunition is a problem," he says "more states are beginning to look at the idea."
