Local Journalism Ignores Facts, Pushes Anti-hunting Activism

By Larry Keane

California Condor iStock-495123612
Local news outlets often choose to ignore readily-available data and instead “report” on a topic using only one-sided activist talking points. IMG iStock-495123612

U.S.A. -(AmmoLand.com)- Local news outlets often choose to ignore readily-available data and instead “report” on a topic using only one-sided activist talking points. It’s a disservice to viewers and leads to bad policy.

Case in point is the push to enact bans on traditional lead-based ammunition that have become increasingly popular despite clear science showing they are harmful to conservation and wildlife management efforts.

California is ground zero.

Ninety-Nine Percent Bias

A particularly egregious perpetrator of this practice is John FitzRandolph, a freelance writer for the San Luis Obispo Tribune. He often writes about California condors and their recovery from near extinction. Instead of including the positive role hunters in California have played in the raptor’s successful and ongoing comeback, he ignores them completely. He suggests the need for even more anti-hunting restrictions.

Fitz Randolph’s latest uses the death of one California condor due to lead poisoning, offering no evidence that it was hunter- or ammunition-related, to cast blame on hunters writ large and to dollar shame them for not using more expensive, less available alternative ammunition options. He ignores that condors are known to consume lead from other sources, including trash and refuse fills, garbage piles and even by ingesting lead-based paint chips from water towers and man-made structures where they’ve nested. FitzRandolph even uses an outdated photo from 2012 of an x-ray showing a condor with bullet fragments.

“As scavengers, condors rely on carrion – the carcasses of deer, squirrels and marine mammals – for food,” FitzRandolph writes. “When a condor’s meal has been killed with lead bullets, studies show that they often become poisoned and perish.”

The article extensively quotes local biologists connecting hunters’ use of traditional lead-based ammunition as the culprit.

“If lead poisoning wasn’t such a huge problem, condors would have been expected to reach (150) by 2025,” Ventana Wildlife Society (VWS) Executive Director Kelly Sorenson explained. “The fact remains, condors can only be self-sustaining when lead poisoning is significantly reduced.”

The anti-hunter, anti-science bias is clear. Despite repeated attacks on California hunters, the population of California condors has risen from 14 in 2000 to nearly 100 today. California legislators in 2019 enacted a complete ban on the use of traditional hunting ammunition, and according to California Department of Natural Resources data, California hunters have a nearly 99 percent compliance rate. There isn’t much more room for traditional ammunition to be “significantly reduced.”

FitzRandolph even attempts to assuage hunters’ hesitancy about switching ammunition by noting they are eligible to receive one 20-round box of lead-free ammunition per calendar year, as if that is a serious trade-off.

From California to Maine

The effort to restrict and dollar shame hunters isn’t solely a California effort. Local news articles use the same flawed logic in Raleigh, N.C.Bangor, MaineWashington State, Minnesota, North DakotaMichigan, and elsewhere and use America’s bald eagles to tug at the public’s heartstrings to gain support for traditional ammunition bans.

Regarding the bald eagle, there’s no greater success story in American conservation. The significant contributions America’s hunters have made cannot be ignored.

In 1963, there were only 417 nesting pairs. Those dire days are long gone. The Department of the Interior released a 2020 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) report celebrating the 71,400 nesting pairs in the lower 48 states and more than 316,000 individual birds. The bald eagle population has quadrupled since 2009. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland praised the bald eagles’ return, saying, “The recovery of the bald eagle is one of the most well-known conservation success stories of all time.”

Flawed Federal Policy

When local news reporting repeats this anti-hunter flawed narrative, it has national implications.

Last year, the USFWS announced a “bait-and-switch” deal that banned the use of traditional ammunition while at the same time opening 18 national wildlife refuges for new hunting and fishing opportunities. It was a ruse. Despite promises from President Joe Biden that his administration would “follow the science,” the USFWS offered no objective scientific evidence establishing that the use of traditional lead core ammunition poses a risk wildlife populations to support its ban.

When hunters are limited in land access and what affordable ammunition they can use, they will instead choose a different activity. That hurts the American public who enjoy access to public lands, not just hunters. It also means less support for the firearm and ammunition industry who pay the Pittman-Robertson excise taxes that go into the Wildlife Restoration Trust Fund and get distributed back to the states for wildlife conservation and management projects.

Created in 1937, firearm and ammunition manufacturers have contributed over $22.4 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars. America’s wildlife populations have never been healthier and that’s the science and success that local media and writers like FitzRandolph should report.


About The National Shooting Sports Foundation

NSSF is the trade association for the firearm industry. Its mission is to promote, protect and preserve hunting and shooting sports. Formed in 1961, NSSF has a membership of thousands of manufacturers, distributors, firearm retailers, shooting ranges, sportsmen’s organizations, and publishers nationwide. For more information, visit nssf.org

National Shooting Sports Foundation

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Montana454Casull

Fact thier green energy wind mills kill more birds of prey than any lead projectile from a hunters rifle .

Prickly

OK, speaking from the Apex Predator POV here….. human hunters have been using lead projectiles to bring down game, which then feeds them and their family, for several centuries. If lead projectiles in game caused casualty / illness in the hunter, I would think the human species would have felt the personal hand of Darwin causing a decline in our numbers, and taken notice. Objective, albeit anecdotal evidence seems to suggest otherwise. Now, personally, when I encounter a chunk of birdshot in something I’m eating, I spit it out. I guess I’m smarter than this reporter and his flock of… Read more »

Arny

So where are all the dead fox, bobcats, wolves, bears, etc dying from lead poisoning that share the dead carcasses ? Sorry the SCIENCE isn’t there.

Zhukov

Good point. Considering these animals do not ingest lead bearing paint chips chew on lead sheathed cables, lead roof flashing, etc. might have something to do with it. Another question is why does this not seem to affect turkey, and black vultures or is it not just reported on?

Arny

I have handled lead weights for balancing wheels for almost 30 years & am a smoker. Where my fingers most likely transferred the lead to my lips. I have also handled the lead flashing, paint, etc. And Not able to wash hands. I have put lead fishing sinkers & bullets in my mouth Here at 55 yrs old & no lead poisoning. How can this be ?

gregs

the decline of all commiefornia condors is 100% because of lead ammunition? there could be no other source of possible lead ingestion or accumulation? isn’t the lead excreted from their body when they defecate? this is kind of too sciency for me, a simple person to understand, so i will just believe what other people tell me. he states he has at least one study to back-up his claim but does not site any in his article so others could verify. no toxicology reports from all the dead animals. i’m sure he is telling the truth, he wouldn’t lie would… Read more »

Bigfootbob

Here we go again. Back in the 60’s a communist supporter, hysterical anti-scientist educated above her common sense, Rachel Carson, wrote a book full of lies that became the bible of radical environmental nazi’s called “Silent Spring.” She and the “book” have been totally discredited but her work was a success at ginning up governmental action with lies. She claimed the Kalifornia Condors and the American Bald Eagle populations were being destroyed by PCB contamination. Now, the same tactics are being employed here. No wonder Brandon & Co. are loving big media, it helps the government do what it does… Read more »

TGP389

I love the diversity of life, and enjoy watching nature, but if it’s condors or shooting, in the words of Powers Booth in Tombstone, “Well … Bye!”

Mind you, since we have more shooters today than ever before, and condors HAVE come back, I don’t think it’s an either/or situation.

Last edited 1 year ago by TGP389
kns

https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/environment/article271496822.html
If you take the time to read the SLO article in its entirety, it is not anti-hunter/anti-rancher.

This explains the lead threat to condors…
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/condors/threats.htm

The Ventana Wildlife Society has a FREE non-lead ammunition program
https://www.ventanaws.org/ammunition.html

Be part of the solution and help save the California Condor!

USMC0351Grunt

I want to buy that horse a bag of oats, some carrots and a couple sugar cubes!