Missed Opportunities: Hunters and Environmentalists

[Jason73]

I’m just asking because I don’t know the answer, I just know what the surgeon told me. Are they dying from eating lead pellets from a shotgun shell or drinking the water at my local reservoir?

Not sure about your local lake but the US Fish and Wildlife Service has been studying this for decades.

 

[SwaggyD]

If you look at the diet of many birds, they eat tiny seeds that are similar in size and shape to lead shot pellets.

Do they drink water with lead in it?

 

[DFS]

If you look at the diet of many birds, they eat tiny seeds that are similar in size and shape to lead shot pellets.

Right but @SwaggyD took 1/3 the shots of 50 cent. Surgeon told him to go live life to the fullest and don’t swallow lake water. I’m curious as well doesn’t make sense.

 

[SwaggyD]

Not sure about your local lake but the US Fish and Wildlife Service has been studying this for decades.

Canyon Ferry is the lake he mentioned. How do they study one duck that has died from lead poisoning and say ‘it was from Darryl’s lead shotgun shell, not the water it drinks every day’. Genuinely curious.

 

[Jason73]

Canyon Ferry is the lake he mentioned. How do they study one duck that has died from lead poisoning and say ‘it was from Darryl’s lead shotgun shell, not the water it drinks every day’. Genuinely curious.

Maybe they biopsy/ autopsy the duck, find how many pellets it has in its digestive system and they can correlate mass to amount of lead to determine cause of death. Hell I don't know! There's a reason you don't paint with lead anymore. Lol.

 

[westbranch]

Do they drink water with lead in it?

Pretty sure the lead is usually not in the water. It's in the mud/muck that waterfowl forage for seeds, tubers, insects, etc. It can be the pellets like elkfever said. The CDA river basin is an example of lead from mining, not hunters. Annual topic that comes up:

SWAN SONG

Swans annual die-off continues

cdapress.com

Click bait title, but interesting article here on the water in lake CDA:

The EPA Can’t Wait to Reopen the Mine That Poisoned North Idaho

Under Scott Pruitt, the Trump EPA approved the reopening of the Bunker Hill Mine on the nation’s second-largest Superfund site.

www.bloomberg.com

If water gets acidic enough it can pull the lead and other metals out of soil and rock and make the water toxic. Berkeley pit would be an extreme example, not lead but other metals. But my limited (not a science person) understanding is that the idea behind how it works is similar.

Here's what happened after thousands of geese landed on the Berkeley Pit

On the night of Nov. 28, 2016, thousands of snow geese flew into the Berkeley Pit and landed on the toxic water. Thousands flew away, but between 3,000 to 4,000

mtstandard.com

 

[SwaggyD]

Pretty sure the lead is usually not in the water. It's in the mud/muck that waterfowl forage for seeds, tubers, insects, etc. It can be the pellets like elkfever said. The CDA river basin is an example of lead from mining, not hunters. Annual topic that comes up:

SWAN SONG

Swans annual die-off continues

cdapress.com

Click bait title, but interesting article here on the water in lake CDA:

The EPA Can’t Wait to Reopen the Mine That Poisoned North Idaho

Under Scott Pruitt, the Trump EPA approved the reopening of the Bunker Hill Mine on the nation’s second-largest Superfund site.

www.bloomberg.com

If water gets acidic enough it can pull the lead and other metals out of soil and rock and make the water toxic. Berkeley pit would be an extreme example, not lead but other metals. But my limited (not a science person) understanding is that the idea behind how it works is similar.

Here's what happened after thousands of geese landed on the Berkeley Pit

On the night of Nov. 28, 2016, thousands of snow geese flew into the Berkeley Pit and landed on the toxic water. Thousands flew away, but between 3,000 to 4,000

mtstandard.com

Thanks! I’ll read those.

 

[hossblur]

We? I'm speaking only for myself and my opinions. I don't profess to know everything. I may be wrong about something. Some day.

These lead bans are just another way for the antis to attack guns, gun owners, and hunting. I don't believe for a minute that it serves any useful purpose to benefit sportsmens resourses or the enviroment in any way. I believe we will have to pick a hill sooner or later. It is silly to keep giving away the high ground just to appease our enemies and people who are going to hate us regardless.

So was it a way to stick it to gun owners to ban lead paint, lead gas, lead pipes? Seems like if we are going to pick a hill to fight on, could it at least be a fight that wasn't settled decades ago.

Or are we supposed to look at condors, and eagles and because there ain't a season on them not care if we are a cause of their harm?

I've shot steel shoot for 3 decades now. Coincidentally or not, during that time, waterfowl seasons have increased to over 100 days a year. Despite all the same dire warnings about the loss of lead.

This debate is one of those that really make hunters look stupid. We are conservationists, as long as we don't have to shoot copper. That's our red line ?

 

[Jack Ryan]

So was it a way to stick it to gun owners to ban lead paint, lead gas, lead pipes? Seems like if we are going to pick a hill to fight on, could it at least be a fight that wasn't settled decades ago.

Or are we supposed to look at condors, and eagles and because there ain't a season on them not care if we are a cause of their harm?

I've shot steel shoot for 3 decades now. Coincidentally or not, during that time, waterfowl seasons have increased to over 100 days a year. Despite all the same dire warnings about the loss of lead.

This debate is one of those that really make hunters look stupid. We are conservationists, as long as we don't have to shoot copper. That's our red line ?

Well who is looking stupid kinda depends on who is doing the looking at who.

 

[hossblur]

Well who is looking stupid kinda depends on who is doing the looking at who.

More correctly, which team jersey your wearing, red or blue.

 

[Jack Ryan]

More correctly, which team jersey your wearing, red or blue.

Meh, the waterboys all look pretty much the same regardless of the team.

 

[nastynate]

If you look at the diet of many birds, they eat tiny seeds that are similar in size and shape to lead shot pellets.

Also, lots of birds (upland/waterfowl) intentionally eat gravel/small stones/grit to help grind up food in their gizzard. You can often find pheasants/grouse doing just that on gravel roads. But I believe that was a major way ducks were getting exposed to lead shot; slurping it off the bottom of swamps. They aren't dying because the water in the wetland has lead in it, but directly from eating pellets.

From big game hunting, the avenue of lead poisoning comes from birds eating gut piles with lead fragments. Distributing a lead bullet onto the landscape isn't a big pollution issue. But sticking that lead into a meaty gutpile that the birds are scavenging- easy route of exposure for birds.

A lot of the lead poisoning from water that we hear about comes from our own plumbing- old lead pipes corroding.

 

[nastynate]

One more important piece of biology here... the lead that get's ingested is then dissolved and absorbed in the acidic digestive system. That's why a pellet in some muscle might not kill a bird from poisoning, but a pellet in the digestive system will.

When lakes/drinking water is acidic it does the same thing. For example, acidic water +lead pipes = bad drinking water.

 

[SwaggyD]

One more important piece of biology here... the lead that get's ingested is then dissolved and absorbed in the acidic digestive system. That's why a pellet in some muscle might not kill a bird from poisoning, but a pellet in the digestive system will.

When lakes/drinking water is acidic it does the same thing. For example, acidic water +lead pipes = bad drinking water.

Thanks for the explanation. This is what I was curious about.

 

[Irrelevant]

It's really hard for me to continue to view environmentalists with a straight face.

When I saw this article https://www.hcn.org/articles/water-report-over-half-of-u-s-waters-are-too-polluted-to-swim-or-fish

I thought... that can't be true. So I went and looked at the original "report" which is incredibly generous label for that document. Turns out they simply used anything on the 303d list as not meeting the fishable and swimmable threshold. That list includes temperature, of which many of the local river around here are listed under, like the Columbia River, the same one that hosts >100k anadromous salmon a year and millions of resident fish, and within with 100k's of people swim in. Under no rational doctrine would anyone call it unfishable or unswimmable. Furthermore, we have a tributary "creek" that exceeds the temp threshold for most of the summer, every year. But it's almost entirely in the wilderness, without any real impacts from humans, except that the irrigation district manages a half a dozen of the lakes as reservoirs thus artificially maintaining higher cooler flows throughout the summer. It is loaded with trout, rainbows, westslope cutts, and bullies, yet apparently this is one of the unfishable and swimmable water bodies.

IMO this type of BS is just as bad as any anti-environment policy.

 

[nastynate]

It's really hard for me to continue to view environmentalists with a straight face.

When I saw this article https://www.hcn.org/articles/water-report-over-half-of-u-s-waters-are-too-polluted-to-swim-or-fish

I thought... that can't be true. So I went and looked at the original "report" which is incredibly generous label for that document. Turns out they simply used anything on the 303d list as not meeting the fishable and swimmable threshold. That list includes temperature, of which many of the local river around here are listed under, like the Columbia River, the same one that hosts >100k anadromous salmon a year and millions of resident fish, and within with 100k's of people swim in. Under no rational doctrine would anyone call it unfishable or unswimmable. Furthermore, we have a tributary "creek" that exceeds the temp threshold for most of the summer, every year. But it's almost entirely in the wilderness, without any real impacts from humans, except that the irrigation district manages a half a dozen of the lakes as reservoirs thus artificially maintaining higher cooler flows throughout the summer. It is loaded with trout, rainbows, westslope cutts, and bullies, yet apparently this is one of the unfishable and swimmable water bodies.

IMO this type of BS is just as bad as any anti-environment policy.

I see your point, and agree that misleading headlines/articles are not helpful in when trying wrestle with complicated issues. But I try hard not to get into an us vs them mindset on these issues. It's not like environmentalists got together and unanimously agreed that this article speaks for them.
I look at that article, my take home message is: the media is full of clickbait titles/exaggerations. Not that environmentalists overall are full of BS.

(To be clear, I'm not trying to misconstrue what you wrote as you thinking environmentalists are all full of BS).

 

[Irrelevant]

I see your point, and agree that misleading headlines/articles are not helpful in when trying wrestle with complicated issues. But I try hard not to get into an us vs them mindset on these issues. It's not like environmentalists got together and unanimously agreed that this article speaks for them.
I look at that article, my take home message is: the media is full of clickbait titles/exaggerations. Not that environmentalists overall are full of BS.

(To be clear, I'm not trying to misconstrue what you wrote as you thinking environmentalists are all full of BS).

Sure, but it's not just the title, it's the entire article and the report behind it and the non-profit funding the report, it's way deeper than just a clicky title. It's a deliberate attempt to create data to fit an argument and call it "science".

The longer I'm on this planet I find that more and more people are full of BS and hypocrisy, including environmentalists

 

[nastynate]

Sure, but it's not just the title, it's the entire article and the report behind it and the non-profit funding the report, it's way deeper than just a clicky title. It's a deliberate attempt to create data to fit an argument and call it "science".

The longer I'm on this planet I find that more and more people are full of BS and hypocrisy, including environmentalists

In this instance I didn't read the whole article or go very deep into it, but, yes... unfortunately people/the media do this all the time. Many people are full of BS, and that includes [insert any group of your choice].

If you want a laugh, google George Carlin's bit on "saving the planet". You might enjoy...

 

[SwaggyD]

If you want a laugh, google George Carlin's bit on "saving the planet". You might enjoy...

You sir, were correct. I did enjoy!

 

[Dougfirtree]

The idea that environmentalism is good for hunting is laughable. Most of the game we hunt thrives on early growth conditions that are generated by human impacts like logging. Since most environmentalists are also preservationists there is no reconciling with them.
On one side you have the environmental lobby which views humans as alien creatures on the land scape. On the other nature is viewed by what it can provide humans. IE nature is our garden to be used for our benifit. I side with the latter.
And FWIW the pebble mine thing is a catastrophe. It should have happened and now that it is dead a mine will be built in a third world country with very little respect for the environment. Because poor people don't give a shit about the luxury of environmentalism and the environment isn't bound by national borders. The Pebble thing was straight up NIMBY'ism.

I couldn't disagree with this more.

First off, while logging and ag may create better habitat for some species of game animals, they do just fine in less impacted environments and I think most hunters do care about species that they can't shoot as well, which sometimes thrive in habitats that are not so modified by humans. And for Pete's sake, this forum is full of people who save and dream all year to hunt in wilderness areas where there's no logging, etc. Guess we're all just stupid for chasing the last few pitiful elk holdouts that didn't get the memo saying they'll be happier where all the roads are...In addition, this is not some either/or situation. We can manage for a mix of wildernessy land, as well as land that is used for activities like logging.

To say that all "environmentalists" (whatever the hell that really means) are strict preservationists is ridiculous. Most people who care deeply about the natural world are aware that there's a place for both the preservationist and conservationist philosophies. They may disagree with you about what that mix looks like, but that's hardly an irreconcilable difference in most cases. There are plenty of industries telling us it is though, as they do not like limits... They'd like to create the same level of polarization that we see in national politics because it benefits them.

And I utterly reject this argument that someone else is going to pillage their environment if we don't do it first. That's a fast road to nowhere good and a philosophy devoid of any morals. We can make good choices for the choices we can make.