Larry, you might want to re-read that one sentence in the statement from Audobon Society that craigd posted earlier:
"Our objective is wildlife and environmental conservation, not the promotion of hunting."
That appears to be the only reason that a few people from Audobon were supportive of your timber management efforts and habitat management efforts by Pheasants Forever. They were supportive of that which would benefit birds overall, but according to the statement craigd found, they would turn on you in a minute if they thought, rightly or wrongly, that some bird species was threatened by sport hunting.
We have discussed the lead paint and leaded gasoline thing in other threads before. I hate to keep repeating myself, but here goes again. Leaded gasoline and lead paint may be mostly gone, but the lead from those products that was deposited in the environment will persist in our soils and waterways for hundreds of years or more... just like the lead shot that was used along lakes, rivers, oceans, and swamps before the Federal ban. All of that shot is still there in sandy, rocky, gravel, or silted bottoms. There is probably literally millions of tons of it fired over the last 200 years, and nobody cleaned it up. A lead bullet on a civil war battlefield still looks like a lead bullet because they don't dissolve or break down readily as other toxic things like DDT did. But strangely, we are not seeing those heart wrenching pictures of dying ducks and staggering geese anymore. Why? Obviously lead shot was not the problem with poisoning waterfowl that it was made out to be. The anti-lead people got what they wanted and are moving on to the uplands and deer woods.
There are many other sources of lead in the environment besides leaded gasoline, lead paint, or lead ammunition. Much of it is much more bio-available than lead bullets or shot. I'm glad you brought up the river water in Flint as a facetious example. That river water did not get contaminated with lead from bullets. The river in Flint is not the only waterway to get contaminated with lead from industrial or mining wastes. Eagles eat a lot of fish too, not just wounded and lost deer.
It's not at all surprising that lead shot was not found in woodcock that had high blood lead levels. It is much more likely the source was earthworms that digested lead tainted soils. WI DNR admitted that, but kept the erroneous conclusions about lead shot on the table even though they found no lead shot in the birds. How do you explain that? More importantly, how can you accept that?
As craig notes, there are plenty of people in the general public who look at things in an anti-hunting way, even when the facts and figures do not add up. I do not wish to be a part of giving them any ammunition to use against us.
