On Friday (Oct. 11), Gov. Jerry Brown of California signed the nation’s first law banning the use of lead bullets in hunting into law. The bill was written to slow the decline of the California condor, which ingests the lead bullets when scavenging at hunters’ gut piles or when eating the bodies of animals shot but not killed by hunters. The law contains an escape clause that will revoke the ban if the federal government bans non-lead bullets because of the armor-piercing abilities.
California had previously banned lead bullets in the areas of the state where there are condors. It is the first state in the nation to ban lead bullets.
One odd fact, the bill was signed in a group of 11 bills. Most of the other of the bills in the group focused on gun control. Protests against banning lead bullets for hunting have often portrayed the bill as a gun control measure rather than a wildlife conservation and human health measure.
Read the Los Angeles Times article here.
Read the KCET blog post here.
Find a Google list of other news articles here.
Long overdue. Hopefully other states will soon follow suit. We need a ban on the use of lead in fishing tackle, too. Untold numbers of waterbirds sicken and die after ingesting lost lead fishing weights (“sinkers”): swans, loons, cormorants, diving ducks, et al.
Worth noting that only ONE Republican voted for AB 711 on either the Assembly or Senate floor. Shouldn’t environmental protection be a bipartisan issue. Curious, too, that the DFW supported AB 711, while the Wardens Association opposed……