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fish and wildlife service
Lead Ammo Harms Wildlife and Undermines the Mission of Our National Parks
Banning lead from our national parks would be one of the single biggest conservation advances in a generation.
Aug 27, 2024
Earlier this month, a California condor, the first of its kind to hatch and take flight in Zion National Park, died of lead poisoning just shy of its fifth birthday. Shockingly, one of this condor’s siblings was earlier found to have the highest recorded lead value ever documented in a live bird over the entire 28-year history of the condor release program.
Lead poisoning remains the leading cause of diagnosed death among California condors. About 90% of condors trapped and tested during this past year had blood lead levels indicating lead exposure. As scavengers, condors ingest lead shot from carcasses of animals killed with lead-based ammunition.
But condors are not the only victims. Lead is a leading threat to all national park birdlife, especially bald eagles, hawks, and other raptors. Lead fragments from spent shells contaminate the entire wildlife food chain.
It’s time for decisive action to protect the wildlife that our national parks were created to preserve.
While most parks by law do not permit hunting, a significant number do. Of the 429 national parks, 76 allow various types of hunting—recreational, subsistence, or tribal hunting. These parks (the largest of which are in Alaska) cover more than 60% of land within the entire national park system. In addition, more than 85% of parks with fish (213 in all) are open for fishing with lead tackle.
The impact is devastating. More than 130 park wildlife species are exposed to or killed by ingesting lead or prey contaminated with lead.
These wildlife deaths are preventable. Since November of 2022, Interior Secretary Deborah Haaland, the cabinet officer overseeing the National Park Service, has had a proposed rule sitting on her desk that would end the use of lead-based ammunition and fishing tackle in all park units. Despite this, no action has been taken on this rule-making petition.
In contrast to the Park Service’s total inaction, its sister agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, (FWS) has declared that “lead ammunition and tackle have negative impacts on both wildlife and human health.” The FWS has taken the first tentative steps to reduce or eliminate the use of lead ammunition by:
- Imposing partial bans on lead ammunition in certain refuges where new hunting opportunities have opened up;
- Phasing out of lead ammunition on three refuges newly opened to hunting; and
- Developing a pilot program to reimburse hunters for using lead-free ammunition.
Though these steps do not constitute a complete ban on lead ammunition, they represent a significant step forward, especially considering that nearly 80% of wildlife refuges and other management districts offer hunting and fishing access.
Unfortunately, wildlife protection does not appear to be a high priority for National Park Service Director Chuck Sams and his leadership team. Earlier this year, he approved questionable hunting practices, such as killing bear cubs and wolf pups in their dens, using dogs and artificial lights to hunt black bears, and shooting swimming caribou from motorboats across more than 22 million acres of Park Service administered lands in Alaska.
These are not the actions of a conservation-focused agency.
Banning lead from our national parks would be one of the single biggest conservation advances in a generation. Such a move would place the Park Service alongside 26 states and countries that have already banned lead ammunition.
The ecological stakes are profound. It’s time for decisive action to protect the wildlife that our national parks were created to preserve.
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US Government Sued Over 'Unethical Destruction' of Wolf Population
"The Fish and Wildlife Service is thumbing its nose at the Endangered Species Act and letting wolf-hating states sabotage decades of recovery efforts," said one conservation leader.
Apr 08, 2024
A pair of conservation coalitions on Monday made good on their threats to sue the U.S. government over its denial of federal protections for gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains, where state killing regimes "put wolves at obvious risk of extinction in the foreseeable future."
The organizations filed notices of their plans for the lawsuits in early February, after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) determined that Endangered Species Act protections for the region's wolves were "not warranted." The Interior Department agency could have prevented the suits in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana by reversing its decision within 60 days but refused to do so.
"The Biden administration and its Fish and Wildlife Service are complicit in the horrific war on wolves being waged by the states of Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana," declared George Nickas, executive director of Wilderness Watch, one of 10 organizations represented by the Western Environmental Law Center (WELC).
"Idaho is fighting to open airstrips all over the backcountry, including in designated wilderness, to get more hunters to wipe out wolves in their most remote hideouts," Nickas noted. "Montana is resorting to night hunting and shooting over bait and Wyoming has simply declared an open season."
"These states are destroying wolf families in the northern Rockies and cruelly driving them to functional extinction via bounties, wanton shooting, trapping, snaring, even running over them with snowmobiles."
Brooks Fahy, executive director of Predator Defense, another WELC group, pointed out that "these states are destroying wolf families in the northern Rockies and cruelly driving them to functional extinction via bounties, wanton shooting, trapping, snaring, even running over them with snowmobiles. They have clearly demonstrated they are incapable of managing wolves, only of killing them."
KC York, founder and president of Trap Free Montana, also represented by WELC, said that "Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming know that they were let off the hook in their brutal and unethical destruction of wolves even acknowledged as such by the service."
"They set the stage for other states to follow," York warned. "We are already witnessing the disturbing onset of giving the fox the key to the hen house and abandoning the farm. The maltreatment is now destined to worsen for these wolves and other indiscriminate species, through overt, deceptive, well-orchestrated, secretive, and legal actions."
The other organizations in the WELC coalition are Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Friends of the Clearwater, International Wildlife Coexistence Network, Nimiipuu Protecting Our Environment, Protect the Wolves, Western Watersheds Project, and WildEarth Guardians.
The second lawsuit is spearheaded by the Center for Biological Diversity, Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society Legislative Fund, and Sierra Club, whose leaders took aim at the same three states for their wolf-killing schemes.
"The states of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming act like it's 1880 with the most radical and unethical methods to kill as many wolves as possible in an effort to manage for bare minimum numbers," said Sierra Club northern Rockies field organizer Nick Gevock. "This kind of management is disgraceful, it's unnecessary, and it sets back wolf conservation decades, and the American people are not going to stand by and allow it to happen."
"Rather than allow states to cater to trophy hunters, trappers, and ranchers, the agency must ensure the preservation of wolves."
Margie Robinson, staff attorney for wildlife at the Humane Society of the United States, stressed that "under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cannot ignore crucial scientific findings. Rather than allow states to cater to trophy hunters, trappers, and ranchers, the agency must ensure the preservation of wolves—who are vital to ensuring healthy ecosystems—for generations to come."
The Center for Biological Diversity's carnivore conservation program director, Collette Adkins, was optimistic about her coalition's chances based on previous legal battles, saying that "we're back in court to save the wolves and we'll win again."
"The Fish and Wildlife Service is thumbing its nose at the Endangered Species Act and letting wolf-hating states sabotage decades of recovery efforts," Adkins added. "It's heartbreaking and it has to stop."
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US Court Strikes Down Florida's 'End Run Around the Endangered Species Act'
"Requiring agencies to follow the law is a win for wildlife, protecting habitat and the public alike," said one advocate.
Feb 16, 2024
A federal court ruling will restore "essential guardrails provided by the Endangered Species Act," said one wildlife advocacy group on Thursday, as the court found that under former Republican President Donald Trump, federal agencies broke the law when they allowed Florida's right-wing government to take over wetlands permitting.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) "made an end run around the Endangered Species Act," said the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) when they greenlighted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' proposal to allow the state to fast-track construction permits for projects on wetlands.
Under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, states can take over wetlands permitting if they can prove that they will not violate wildlife protections.
Shortly after the EPA transferred the authority to Florida in 2020, CBD was joined by groups including Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club, and Miami Waterkeeper in suing the agency.
This past December, environmental legal group Earthjustice requested a preliminary injunction on behalf of CBD and the Sierra Club to stop Florida from issuing state permits for development projects near the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, where an estimated 120-230 endangered panthers "remain in their last territory on Earth," according to CBD.
The FWS found that the projects were likely to kill between seven and 26 panthers each year as they were pushed out of their habitat and became vulnerable to car collisions on nearby roads, while another three panthers would be otherwise harmed by the habitat loss each year.
“We're talking about the destruction of some of the last remaining habitat for one of the most endangered animals in the world," said Earthjustice attorney Bonnie Malloy on Thursday. "Restoring the Endangered Species Act protections will ensure that these projects get the analysis and review Congress intended to protect threatened and endangered species."
The court ruled on the groups' underlying claim that the EPA's transfer of the authority would violate federal endangered species protections, rather than just issuing a preliminary injunction.
Elise Bennett, Florida and Caribbean director at CBD, called the ruling "a reprieve for critically endangered species like the Florida panther," but warned that "we'll never prevent the extinction of our most vulnerable wildlife unless we stop bulldozing the wild places where they live."
"The Endangered Species Act can save these magnificent creatures, but only if our agencies follow the law. We'll continue to fight sprawling developments that rip apart the precious wetlands and interconnected natural spaces that Florida's most imperiled wildlife need to survive," said Bennett.
Florida Phoenix columnist Craig Pittman called the ruling "huge news for Florida's wetlands, because DeSantis' [Department of Environmental Protection] never said no to a developer."
Elizabeth Fleming, senior Florida representative at Defenders of Wildlife, said that "wetlands are the lifeblood of Florida, providing essential habitat to the world's only population of the critically endangered Florida panther and many other rare and endemic species, all found within one of the most biologically diverse states in the country."
"Requiring agencies to follow the law is a win for wildlife," she said, "protecting habitat and the public alike, as protecting our wetlands also protects drinking water and ecosystems across the state."
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