Wow Brent, if some of the good science including intentional feeding of birds with lead pellets won't convince you that the effect is minimal compared to other more bio-available sources of lead... nothing will.
Sorry, but I have studied this situation pretty extensively and I still do not see lead poisoning due to lead ammunition in either raptors or waterfowl as a slam dunk. Not even close. As even Larry has noted in point # 3 of his last post, lead shot isn't even on the radar screen when it comes to upland game birds. It is a virtual non-issue even in areas of very heavy shot-fall.
I don't make contentions about bad science. I have actually seen it. I have even eaten it. I once ate some brook trout that were killed by a researcher, and in his paper, the deaths were blamed on low pH water in a study on acid mine drainage into Pennsylvania trout streams. Don't try to tell me it doesn't happen. My Alma Mater conspired with East Anglia University in Great Britain to manipulate climate data to prove Global warming. You don't hear much about the 2009 Climate-gate scandal because the Liberal Press barely reported it.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/6748-ipcc-researchers-admit-global-warming-fraudData gets fudged all the time, and when there is government grant money involved, the incentive to cheat becomes even greater. The researcher who killed and grilled the trout told me that if you could manage to get the word "Cancer" into your grant requests, you more than doubled your chances of getting money.
The first lead ban that was supposed to protect Condors didn't even make a statistically significant dent in their population decline or blood lead levels, so rather than admit that there must be some other source of lead to blame, the anti-lead ammunition people including Audobon pursued a statewide ban. Pray tell, what kind of surrender, or what you call "rational, adaptive legislation" would have been a viable alternative?
In other words, how do you figure that accepting agenda driven bad science and simply laying down in surrender is a winning strategy???
This has to be some of the craziest stuff I have seen since the massive document dumps of easily refuted crap that was posted here by that anti-lead lunatic Ben (GrouseGuy)Deeble. Your post, taken in its' entirety, reminds me of some of the political double-speak you would find in George Orwell's "Animal Farm".
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
George Orwell, Animal Farm
“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”
George Orwell, Animal Farm
“This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.”
George Orwell, Animal Farm
If hunters want to be constructive, instead of fighting everything to do with lead restrictions, they instead got rational about it, there would be a chance of installing rational, adaptive legislation that would minimize everyone's attention on population level problems. But the most vocal hunters would rather fight than win.
