Rush for lead-free bullets exhausts ammo giveaway fund!
The Ventana Wildlife Society offered to provide hunters with two 20-round boxes of lead-free ammo in 22 different calibers to hunters and ranchers, or two boxes of 50 non-lead bullets, in 12 different calibers, to reloaders. When the offer was made public on March 26, Ventana Wildlife received 500 orders from hunters and ranchers for ammo that can be used legally in California condor range, which includes Monterey and San Benito counties. The orders amounted to more than $37,000, which exhausted the giveaway fund provided by private donors! The 2008 Ridley-Tree Condor Preservation Act requires that non-lead ammo be used in the condor range in California.
According to the Ventana Wildlife Society executive director Kelly Sorenson, lead poisoning from lead bullets in carcasses or entrails remains the number 1 obstacle to full recovery of condors in the wild. A UC Santa Cruz study traced lead poisoning of condors to ingestion of lead bullet fragments from such sources.
In California? Imagine THAT! 😉 Maybe the Ventana Wildlife Society is not as politically savvy as they really NEED to be. Hunters in the U.S. are VERY concerned with conservation efforts. Most conservation is FUNDED by taxes on hunting equipment and ammunition.
Meanwhile, additional funds have been collected for the program, bringing the total to $50,000! The Society will hold drawings for the remaining giveaways. Interested hunters and ranchers in Monterey and San Benito counties may apply at www.ventanaws.org/ammunition.
According to the Monterey Herald:
Condors have been released in Big Sur by Ventana Wildlife Society since 1997 and at Pinnacles National Monument by the National Park Service since 2003.
Sorenson said there are 62 condors living in the wild in Central California, with a total population in the wild and in zoos of 386 birds, up from 22 living condors in the 1980s.
-Bill at
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