Condors, Conservation, and You

Once on the brink of extinction, a bird of prey is making its way back.

By Podcast Team and Chris Parish
Published on July 18, 2024
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Adobe Stock/photobyjimshane

In Episode 222 of Mother Earth News and Friends, we’re looking at a conservation effort for California condors. What would happen if California condors went extinct? At one point, there were only 22 left in the world, but things are changing for the better. Chris Parish of The Peregrine Fund shares about the California Condor Recovery Program as well as other efforts to transition to lead free bullets for hunting to save condor populations.

Scroll down for our episode transcript, and scroll to the bottom for our show-note resources!

Condors, Conservation, & You Transcript

Kenny Coogan: [00:00:00] I understand you hunt an animal and then the bullet has some fragments and most of it’s in the offal, but is any of it in the meat that the human would be eating?

Chris Parish: Another question that we had as hunters and we wanted to quantify how extensively the lead existed from the individual carcass before it was cleaned all the way down to the package meat.

We took 30 of those deer and we sent them to processors. And processors are the people that package our meat, make it look, you know, in these nice little white packages that have steaks and burger, et cetera. And we quantified fragmentation all the way through that.

And we found that 32 percent of the burger contained lead by radiographic evidence and then by extracting those radiographic opacities and then determining that they were lead. So it does in fact go all the way through into the meat that we take home, which begs the question, is that a concern? Well, we [00:01:00] are not medical professionals and we’re not physicians. So that’s something that every individual needs to take up with their medical professionals and, and ask. But I wouldn’t say concerned about that, but we were concerning ourselves with understanding how pervasive the lead was. And then that allows people to make more informed decisions about what they consume.

Jessica Anderson: Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. At Mother Earth News for 50 years and counting, we’ve been dedicated to conserving the planet’s natural resources while helping you conserve your financial resources. In this podcast, we host conversations with experts in the fields of sustainability, homesteading, natural health, and more to share all about how you can live well wherever you are in a way that values both people and our Mother Earth.

Kenny Coogan: Good day, everyone. I am Kenny Coogan and joining me today is Chris Parish, the president and CEO [00:02:00] of the Peregrine Fund located in Boise, Idaho. Their mission is to conserve birds of prey worldwide. Chris is a lifelong hunter and has extensive knowledge and experience working with California condors.

Today’s podcast, we are going to be focusing on how hunters can help conservation efforts. Welcome to the podcast, Chris.

Chris Parish: Thank you, Kenny. I appreciate it. Welcome everybody, and looking forward to talk about our experience with condors and the relationship that that has to hunting

Kenny Coogan: Between 10 and 15 years ago, I was at the International Avian Association of Trainers and Educators conference, or IAATE. And you did a presentation on California condor conservation back then. And it was very memorable, and I thought back then that this message needs to be spread to a wider audience. It was so impactful and I truly am happy that you’re here. [00:03:00] You got everyone in the room to get goosebumps and I think everyone’s idea about how to reach people changed. So, in the intro, I mentioned you’re a lifelong hunter and fisherman.

[00:03:11] How is Hunting and Conservation Related?

Kenny Coogan: Can you remind the listeners how hunting and conservation are related?

Chris Parish: You bet. I think it starts with the fact that we’ve all emerged from a hunting and gathering society. We’re evolutionarily programmed to care about healthy environments because we and our families and our communities can’t be healthy unless we have healthy ecosystems. So, to me, they’ve always been one in the same, even though that hunting has decreased per, per the population, you know, not as many people hunt as used to per capita because we can obtain our resources elsewhere. But for a lot of us, the hunting and fishing remains at our core. We all come from hunters and gatherers. So I think we share a lot more with the quote unquote [00:04:00] wild world than we actually acknowledge.

[00:04:03] What Would Happen if California Condors Went Extinct?

Kenny Coogan: In 1982, there were only 22 California condors left. And what would happen if all the California condors went extinct? What is their niche? Why are they important? Who cares?

Chris Parish: I think we were taught when we were younger that when you lose one part of this greater system, one cog, as I’ve heard it said, when you lose one part, then the whole thing comes tumbling down. It’s not always that that is the case, but I think number one, if we would have lost the condors, we would have failed future generations and those that came before us, because we would have failed the condor and lost the condor out of ignorance. And in this day and age, I think that’s despicable to think that we could have lost the species out of our ignorance.

And we’ve learned so much from studying these individual parts of these greater, more complex systems and learning what we’ve learned from the [00:05:00] condor and the fact that we can preserve it, sustain it, and recover it for future generations to learn from. I think that gives future generations hope. It gives them pause for thinking, wow do we know enough? Have we studied enough? Are we managing our ecosystems well enough? Not only for ourselves, but for all the critters within it. I think we would have lost a tremendous opportunity to both learn about ourselves and our environment and, more importantly, teach future generations how to keep their finger on the pulse of our planet and its health.

Kenny Coogan: I think I was also reading that the California condor was one of the first species that was successful, based off of the ’70s Endangered Species Act.

Chris Parish: Yeah. Yeah. In California, I think it was the first listed species on the California, because they had a separate list in California. And I think a lot of people mostly know [00:06:00] the ESA, the Endangered Species Act, and they know the condor because it was so close to extinction and that’s what they remember. The important thing is the devil’s in the details, right? You got to get into it to understand why. And there were huge debates in the early years about these birds are going extinct, extinction is a natural process, we should just let them go with dignity. Man, I understand the debate and I love the debate, but had we done so, we would have failed to understand that the cause of their decline was right under our nose, and that’s lead poisoning.

How we know that is by studying the condor so intensively during the reintroduction phase that we can understand that lead poisoning accounts for 50 percent roughly population wide of their decline and of their mortalities today. That’s a tremendous amount of knowledge about something that was right under our noses.

Kenny Coogan: Last summer I took 28 [00:07:00] teachers to the Grand Canyon for a seven day whitewater rafting trip, and we saw two California condors on a bridge, and we were working very hard to get the raft to slow down so we could see them for as long as possible.

Chris Parish: That’s right. .

[00:07:18] What is the California Condor Recovery Program?

Kenny Coogan: So you mentioned California. Can you tell us what is the California Condor Recovery Program?

Chris Parish: You bet. It’s a program that consists of state, federal, tribal governments, NGOs, universities, zoos. It’s a huge effort and it’s a community effort for sure to both breed the birds in captivity, release them and monitor them in the wild, and then take what we learn from monitoring that in the wild, like the causes of mortality, and investigate those and see if we can’t curb those causes of mortality. And the ones we’re most interested in are the ones that are at our hands, if you will, the ones that are anthropogenically forced, or human related. [00:08:00] And that’s what the recovery program is. And we hope that the condor follows in the footsteps of the programs like the peregrine falcon recovery, the bald eagle recovery.

I mean, we have these successes in our history, and we’re in the process of hopefully seeing that next one recovered if we can address those major causes of mortality, like lead poisoning. And now, unfortunately we had highly pathogenic avian influenza hit the population in Arizona last year, and we lost 21 birds in a little over a month. Unfortunately, that’s one we don’t have a solution for. But for lead poisoning, we know we can make a difference there by getting people to either use non lead ammunition or haul the remains of shot animals from the field.

And it’s not just hunters. There’s a lot of different sources out there, from whether it’s a law enforcement individual putting down an animal that’s been wounded on the road or a livestock operator who puts an animal down that’s, say, got a broken [00:09:00] leg or is sick and in the field. There are a lot of different potential sources there. But man, I jumped right down a rabbit hole there pretty, pretty quick. But the Condor Recovery Program, it’s made up of captive propagation, release and monitoring, and an awful lot of support. A lot of people don’t know that the majority of funding that goes into recovery programs is not federal dollars. It’s not tax, our tax dollars. For our experience, for example, with the Peregrine Fund, we raised 60 to 75 percent of the funding for our efforts in the recovery program annually. And that’s quite a testament that people care and they’re willing to vote with their dollar, if you will, to see this program through each year.

Kenny Coogan: We should probably mention that in 1982, there was only 22 condors, but now there’s over 500.

Chris Parish: Yeah, 1982, there were 22 condors, and then the captive breeding program began. First birds were released in 1991 in California, and then we started [00:10:00] releasing birds in northern Arizona in 1996, and we now have wild hatched young who have given arise to a second generation there. So, in the biology and scientists world, you say the “F2 generation.” But now we have wild hatch condors hatching out more wild free flying condors. So it’s been quite successful, with the exception of those birds that we’ve lost to preventable causes, like lead poisoning.

[00:10:27] How Does Lead Bullets Affect California Condors?

Kenny Coogan: So what does lead bullets due to a condor?

Chris Parish: I’m going to get a little bit into the weeds because it’s important that we talk about all the different sources, all the different types of ammunition residues. And that sounds like an overly scientific way of talking about it, but it’s not necessarily the bullets themselves. And we’ve learned this through our studies. When we saw high levels of lead in the condor population, corresponding with the deer hunting season on the Kaibab Plateau in northern Arizona, and we took our [00:11:00] location data to know where the birds were, and we knew that they were feeding on gut piles. And when I say a “gut pile,” these are the, the “offal” or the ” gralloch,” if you’re from overseas. These are the remains of animals after they’re hunted that we leave in the field.

And we asked the simple question and looked to the literature and found very little. How much lead can there possibly be in an animal left in the field or the remains of an animal, a hunted animal left in the field? And so we didn’t find what we were looking for.

So we went and did a study and we quantified rates of fragmentation. And this is the key part of defining that bullet residue. When we use centerfire rifle ammunition to take wild or big game like deer or elk, those bullets tend to fragment upon impact to varying degrees depending on bullet construction. And those fragments are left in the vital organs, which is where we target animals to put them down as humanely as possible. And then we clean the [00:12:00] animal in the field and leave that in the field. So any fragmentation that occurs from that bullet, might be 20 percent of the bullet, might be 30 percent of the bullet. It can be unknowingly contained in the remains we leave in the field. And then scavengers come and play their crucial role in the environment to clean up the remains of animals. You know, this relationship goes well beyond that a relationship between hunters and scavengers because not all hunters are bipedal like us humans, right? There are a lot of remains of animals that get cleaned up that are killed by other predators or natural death, et cetera. And these obligate scavengers, like the condors, clean it up.

And what we didn’t know, and what was under our nose all that time, is that the style of hunting we’ve done for the last couple of hundred years with high powered rifles or shotguns or rimfire ammunition can leave little bits of lead in the scavengeable remains. So these condors and other scavengers [00:13:00] go and consume that. And there it’s unknown to them that there’s lead in there, and it was unknown to us. And that’s how they’re getting the lead. So we discovered that through the study of, of both the condors in the field and then asking simple questions about where’s the lead coming from and how much can there possibly be.

And so as a result of all of this, we began sharing that information with our partners who manage hunting in Arizona and Utah. And we began developing voluntary programs to share this information with our fellow hunters and ask them for their help to disrupt that pathway by one of two means: using non lead ammunition or hauling the remains out of the field.

And we’ve had some tremendous success on the small scale. And now we’re trying to expand that more broadly across the United States and all of North America. And we launched a a partnership called the North American Non-lead Partnership in 2018 in an effort to do just that: to share this [00:14:00] information so that people can make informed decisions, from individual hunters, all the way to management agencies.

[00:14:05] Lead Fragments in Meat

Kenny Coogan: And a link to that organization will be in the show notes. I understand you hunt an animal and then the bullet has some fragments, and most of it’s in the offal, but is any of it in the meat that the human would be eating?

Chris Parish: Another question that we had as hunters and we wanted to quantify how extensively the lead existed from the individual carcass before it was cleaned all the way down to the package meat.

And so we, we added to that study. We took 30 of those deer and we sent them into processors, a sample of them. We sent them to processors, and processors are the people that package our meat, make it look, you know, in these nice little white packages that have steaks and burger, et cetera. And we quantified fragmentation all the way through that.

And we found that 32 percent of the burger contained lead by [00:15:00] radiographic evidence and then by extracting those radiographic opacities and then determining that they were lead. So it does in fact go all the way through into the meat that we take home, which begs the question, is that a concern? Well, we are not medical professionals and we’re not physicians. So that’s something that every individual needs to take up with their medical professionals and, and ask. But I wouldn’t say concerned about that, but we were concerning ourselves with understanding how pervasive the lead was. And then that allows people to make more informed decisions about what they consume.

And what we’re focused on, however, is the wildlife. And we’ve expanded our conversation to ecosystem health so that any critter that consumes the remains of a shot animal, they don’t have the luxury of knowing whether or not it has lead and they should avoid it. And they also don’t have the luxury of passing up a free meal, right? Or, I shouldn’t say “free,” they have to [00:16:00] work for it. But passing up a meal. And so we’re asking hunters to take actions to reduce that potential threat. Because wildlife don’t have the ability to make a decision on their own. And we’re asking hunters and anglers to consider that when choosing their next type of ammunition, or even in some of their fishing supplies.

[00:16:22] Lead in a Condor’s System

Kenny Coogan: And speaking of wildlife, the California condor, they’re bald, they’re hunchback. They’re not really the most attractive bird. But I think everybody likes a bald eagle, and bald eagles are scavengers too. And, lots of animals, like you were mentioning, are eating the remains or the carcass of an animal.

Why does just a tiny bit of lead affect a 25 pound condor so severely? Is it physiology? And, bald eagles are like 10 to 15 pounds. And then you got lots of other [00:17:00] animals.

Chris Parish: You bet. So, lead basically isn’t good for any vertebrate species that has been studied. It’s not a vital nutrient. It’s not beneficial. And no level of lead is considered safe for vertebrate species. In

the case of condors and the difference between condors and eagles, for example, imagine for a moment, the condor is a scavenger. They eat carcasses of things that are already dead. So they need to be able to handle things like botulism, anthrax, right? Things that would kill us. The condors and other scavengers can consume. They have a very acidic gut. And so when you take the same amount of lead and put it through a condor system with a very acidic gut, that lead can be broken down more readily and then transported throughout the body and stored in the vascularized tissues all the way into the bone and brain. Once it gets into the bone and brain, the half life goes to like 30 or 40 years. So it’s an overall accumulation over time. And if you take a [00:18:00] bald eagle, by comparison, they’re not as much of a scavenger. Obviously they’re, they’re an opportunistic scavenger. So only a portion of their annual food, if you will, will come from scavengeable remains of wildlife that have been shot. So that’s one difference.

But condors actually aren’t more sensitive to lead. They can actually tolerate tremendous amounts of lead. If you or I went into our physician and we had 100 micrograms per deciliter in our blood, there’d be some serious questions from our physician. They’d say, ” How old is your home? How old is the plumbing? Do you have lead paint, et cetera, or any other occupational exposure hazards that you might be getting this lead from at 100 micrograms per deciliter?” Now, if some of the condors have survived blood lead levels that have been measured at a thousand micrograms per deciliter. So it’s not that they’re more sensitive. They’re more exposed to it because they’re an obligate scavenger. So seasonally, if they’re in an area where there’s quite a bit of hunting, they can have a lot of exposure [00:19:00] during that time. So I forgot the last part of your question. Cause I, I always get sidetracked. There’s so much to talk about.

Kenny Coogan: Yeah. I was just asking if it was the physiology of why they get affected so bad, and right before you said this phrase, I wrote it down: “obligate scavenger.” I feel like you probably taught me that 10 years ago. So these are animals that are obligated to eat dead animals. They cannot hunt, so that’s what diet consistents of..

Chris Parish: Yes. Exactly. So you know, and you look at other, other species like ravens. And, and of course, people, people say, “well, how come other scavengers, obligate scavengers, like turkey vultures and black vultures, how come their populations aren’t declining?”

Well, then you have to think about the numbers game. With condors, there are so few, and the fact that we study every one of them individually, we mark them and track them and if they get sick and die, we recover them and send them in for a necropsy. We can determine cause of death. The other thing is they’re [00:20:00] slow to reproduce. They only produce young at about, well, capable at five and six years of age for males and females respectively. But they’re usually not successful in producing their first young until eight years of age. And then they only have one egg and one nestling every other year.

So that’s a very slow rate of reproduction. Therefore, if there’s one new cause of mortality that comes in and, and puts pressure on that population, their reproductive biology won’t allow them to keep up. Whereas populations that are much larger, let’s say the bald eagles or the ravens or turkey vultures or black vultures, number one, they’re not studied like condors. So we really don’t know if they are affected like the condors are. We just know that their populations are stable or increasing like the bald eagle.

But a great study came out a couple of years ago, and it was published in Science by Vince Slabe and Todd Katzner, and they were able to demonstrate from a nationwide [00:21:00] data set that while the bald eagle population is increasing, it could be increasing actually even more without lead. So its population potential total growth was limited by 4. 8 percent for bald eagles and one percent for golden eagles. And while that doesn’t sound like anything too alarming because bald eagles are recovered, they’re doing great, they could be doing better without that. And the golden eagle, however, which is declining in some regions of the U. S., a 1 percent limitation on their reproductive capacity is a much bigger deal than say the 4. 8 limit on bald eagles.

So it comes down to a numbers game and then their reproductive potential and how many young they have and how quickly they come to breeding age, et cetera. So for the condor, they just got the bum end of the deal there because it takes them so long to reproduce. And then only one young every other year.

[00:21:54] How to Create Conservational Change

Kenny Coogan: So regarding the lead bullets, you have said that we know the science [00:22:00] and now we just need to act. So why are you not a fan of top-down government-mandated lead banning?

Chris Parish: Number one is human behavior. We don’t like to be told what to do. And despite the fact that we think we’re fairly progressive, we don’t like change. Nobody likes change. And for people to consider changing, laws, yes, have a role in influencing behavior, but the knowledge behind it is more important to begin with, I believe.

What people think, let’s talk about that for a minute. Where are they informed? If they think that anything surrounding an endangered species is driven by environmental groups, that’s problem number one. How you augment that or how you address that is by sharing the information. And that’s what we do in these presentations. And I just spent two weeks on the road talking with fellow hunters in the Northeast and in Missouri at the Hunter Education Association annual meeting, [00:23:00] where we’re sharing this information, and even lifelong hunters that are multi generational hunters, they have no idea.

And so the first step is to share the information so that they can understand the pathway for lead exposure, the potential impact on species like the condor and others, and then that begins to shape the path towards change. If you just simply come in and say, “you can’t do this anymore,” I too, as an aging male in my early fifties, you can’t keep up, right? And you don’t know what to believe. There’s so many different sources out there. And if it’s just an environmental group or a conservation group or a raptor group talking about this, people are leery. And they’re wondering, is this an anti hunting campaign? Are they after my guns? And it just gets into this political quagmire. So the reason we don’t support litigation or legislation to solve this problem is we believe that people need the information in order to begin [00:24:00] considering to change their behavior. And in tens of thousands of hunters that we’ve engaged with over the years, in small groups or even as individuals, upon hearing the story of how we’ve come to understand this system through the intensive study of the condor, they are inclined to change. That’s the first step.

Now, will, will laws someday play a role? Potentially, potentially, but right now people don’t understand. And if you tell them to do something and for some reason that they don’t understand, the likelihood of them following through to do it is pretty slim.

[00:24:35] Lead Shot and Waterfowl

Kenny Coogan: I also remember you mentioning that we’ve known that lead bullets and waterfowl is not good for us since like the late 1800s. And then it took over a hundred years for us to make a law, even though we knew for so long.

Chris Parish: Exactly. See, what we’re talking about there is lead shot for waterfowl. If I was to say that to [00:25:00] a lifelong hunter, a multi generational hunter, that, you know, we got rid of lead bullets in waterfowl hunting, they would say, “You don’t even know what you’re talking about. You don’t know the difference between a bullet and lead shot.” Lead shot is what we use for birds, usually, and lead bullets are what we use for other types of game, like big game.

But yes, to get to your point that George Bird Grinnell published a paper in the late 1800s about the deleterious effects of lead shot and waterfowl. And then 1991, lead shot was banned for waterfowl hunting in the United States and later, two years later, I think, in Canada. So it was, it was agreed widely by the sports groups, the hunting groups, and the, and the, the scientists and the governments and the state and federal governments that it was worthy of banning all those, those types of lead shot that were used in waterfowl because of the deleterious effects, not only in waterfowl, but also in the predatory species, like the [00:26:00] bald eagle.

But even after the transition was made, and it took a few years for people to change, you know, the, the, the behavior entirely, we saw duck populations doing better. But there’s always some legacy lead, lead that’s still in the ponds that’s on the bottom that can be eaten by diver ducks or dabbling ducks in shallow ponds or lakes, there’s still some legacy lead. But what was interesting is the bald eagles continued to show lead exposure even after. And I think now we know why, because lead fragmentation from center fire and rimfire ammunition that we use to harvest animals whose remains in some cases are left in the field.

So, wonderful learning opportunity. But when you’re losing birds each year, it can’t happen fast enough and we get desperate. And I think when people get desperate, they want to force change and just mandate it. And that that’s really, I believe why people say “we should just ban it,” but I have to remind people that, you [00:27:00] know, it’s against the law to speed as well. A lot of things are against the law, and if you don’t understand why, like, you’ve never gotten a ticket, or you’ve never had an accident, or had a loved one get into an accident, you may think that it’s fine to, to, you know, go above the posted speed limits, but people have to understand and believe in the change before they change, even if it’s law.

[00:27:21] How Many Hunters Have Changed to Non-Lead Ammunition?

Kenny Coogan: Can you give us some statistics on how many hunters have switched from lead to non lead ammunition, or to promise that they’re gonna clean up the offal, or the remains?

Chris Parish: Yeah, some of the best data we have is from one of our partners at Arizona Game and Fish in a program that has been in place on the Kaibab Plateau since 2005. And the problem with having more landscape scale numbers is that you have to have the programs in place and you have to have communication with hunters, and that’s tough to get that relationship built. That’s again another reason why we founded the North [00:28:00] American Non-lead Partnership to build a trusted source, a credible source, that we can have broad scale programs to collect those data to find out how we’re doing.

But on the Kaibab Plateau since 2005, the Arizona Game and Fish has managed a voluntary program where hunters receive free non lead ammunition should they choose to participate. Or they can participate elsewise by hauling the gut piles out of the field. And then we incentivize that process to hopefully remove the gut piles if they did use lead. They’ve maintained 87 percent annual participation for over a decade. Now, this is only two, two week deer seasons, roughly speaking, and it’s only a couple thousand hunters, but it’s a proof in concept and proof in action that if you share information, if you ask for help and you facilitate the transition, you can actually have a tremendous impact. So that’s what we’re trying to do on a national scale [00:29:00] now.

[00:29:00] Are Lead-Free Bullets for Hunting Good?

Kenny Coogan: So I have a master’s in global sustainability, and I’m reminded that just because there’s an alternative to something doesn’t mean that people are going to switch. So, how do you convey the message, or how do you answer the question, are lead-free bullets for hunting good? Like, are they just as good as a lead bullet?

Chris Parish: I think you have to back up even a little farther. I remember growing up in the southern San Joaquin Valley. And when we heard of replacing a solvent, for example, you know. Solvents are really good chemically active solvents that clean oil, for example, clean up oil and grease. And I remember the biodegradable fad. And when that came on, it’s like, “it’s so much better for the environment.” But it didn’t work. And so the old timers where I grew up, they just continue to use gas and diesel to wash parts because it was effective, you know, and they didn’t wear gloves. And now we know that [00:30:00] that’s probably not great, but people are leery of things that are “better” unless they actually work.

Luckily for ammunition sources that are copper based, they do work very well, but they didn’t when they first started. I mean, when they first came on the market, they weren’t widely known. It’s still hard to identify it, hard to find it. And in some cases it’s more expensive, but in some other cases, ammunition that works just as well for, say, 30-06, 168 grain bullets that now they have some copper bullets for most of the calibers that shoot just as well as their lead counterparts.

And in some cases, they’re the same price. In some cases, even a little less expensive than some of the stuff on the market. So that’s another part of what we demonstrate to the hunters. We do ballistics testing, and we’ll show hunters the two bullets side by side in ballistics gel to show that they generate the same wound cavity, they penetrate just as far or farther. [00:31:00] And then we talk about cost and what we find in local stores when we go to do a presentation there.

Kenny Coogan: Many of our MOTHER EARTH NEWS listeners are farmers and ranchers and also hunters. And like you mentioned earlier, it’s not just hunters who can be adding lead to the environment. It could be farmers who are euthanizing a cow or a horse. Do you have a solution for them if they need to put down an animal in the field? Is it really as simple as removing the gut pile? Because I don’t know if people do that for those animals.

Chris Parish: No, it depends on the size of the animal. But and it’s and again, it’s not just farmers and ranchers, but also law enforcement. And so we’re reaching out to all those different demographics, if you will, and saying, “hey, here are some different types of ammunition you can use.” We’re sometimes providing that ammunition to get them to try it just so they can see that it’s effective. And that’s when I say facilitating the transition. That’s what that is.

But even law enforcement, whether [00:32:00] it’s a department of public safety, highway patrol, local sheriffs, or wildlife officers or federal officers, park rangers, we’re doing presentations for them as well to encourage them to carry non-lead ammunition for the “dispatch,” is the word they use, dispatch of animals that need to be put down, whether it’s a wounded animal that was hit on the road or a wounded livestock animal out in the field. What people use is what they have, and we have to, we have to work on changing that.

[00:32:29] Other Dangers to Birds of Prey

Kenny Coogan: One of our listeners, Deep Roots Community Farm asks, ” Farms that raise livestock tend to have grain around and therefore rodents. How detrimental is rodenticides or rodent poisons to birds of prey populations?”

Chris Parish: Some rodenticides are very problematic for secondary poisoning. And again, you can’t blame people for wanting to get rid of those rodents, because they’re a real problem and they can carry disease, et cetera, and they can eat up all your feed. So, [00:33:00] so there are different ways to address that other than poisons. And we encourage those other types of, of whether it’s a live trap, but then you have to do something with them. They’re also kill traps, and that’s another one. But yeah, I mean, looking at some of the most common species of raptors out there, like red tails, there was a study from about four years ago that said 68 percent of red tail hawks have ARs, or anticoagulant rodenticide toxins, in their systems. So it is pervasive and it can cause secondary poisoning in non target species. And I think that’s the key. We want to target the species that are plaguing us. We don’t want to kill species beyond that. So it is something that’s everybody’s watching for and trying to figure out alternative solutions.

Kenny Coogan: Locally in central Florida, we’ve, we had a family of barred owls for 20 years, and people kept going to the park every year, seeing the owlets. And then a nearby restaurant put out some rodenticides, and the whole family [00:34:00] died within a week, and there was major uproar.

Chris Parish: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No matter where we work and with what other raptors we work with around the world, it’s always related to humans. And we need to work with people to solve problems, both their problems and the potential problems that are secondary to the problems they’re trying to address. That is the key. We have to work with people and understand those systems. So working with people to find sustainable solutions. That’s the key.

Kenny Coogan: We have time for one last question. Other than condors, can you give us a species or a group of birds of prey that the Peregrine Fund is working on currently that you find really interesting or hopeful?

Chris Parish: Yes. Gosh, it’s hard to pick just one. Well, I’ll go broad. Watching what’s happening with vultures in Africa and seeing and, and also in India. It comes down to the relationship between people that are trying [00:35:00] to protect their livestock, and they have a predator come in and take one of their stock, and that sometimes ends up in a carcass being poisoned to retaliate against that predator and kill that predator, which can lead to secondary poisoning to thousands of vultures a year, maybe tens of thousands. So by working with people to deal with those losses of their livestock and create better systems to protect their livestock, that’s one of our biggest programs in Africa. So that’s, that’s one that’s near and dear, just because of the scale.

Kenny Coogan: And then people can go to the Peregrine Fund’s website and social media to learn more.

Chris Parish: Remember, we’re a non profit and we need your support. We need your understanding, your support, to continue this. Because like I said, we’re largely individually and foundationally funded.

Kenny Coogan: Thank you, Chris, so much for our conversation today.

Chris Parish: Thank you.

[00:35:59] Podcast Credits

Jessica Anderson: [00:36:00] Thanks for joining us for this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends. To listen to more podcasts and get connected on our social media, visit www.MotherEarthNews.com/Podcast. You can also email us at Podcast@OgdenPubs.Com with any questions or suggestions. Our podcast production team includes Jessica Anderson, Kenny Coogan, and Alyssa Warner.

Music for this episode is “Hustle” by Kevin MacLeod.

The Mother Earth News and Friends podcast is a production of Ogden Publications.

Until next time, don’t forget to love your Mother.

About Chris Parish

Chris Parish is the president and CEO of the Peregrine Fund located in Boise, Idaho. Their mission is to conserve birds of prey worldwide. Chris is a lifelong hunter and has extensive knowledge and experience working with California condors.

Additional Resources

The Peregrine Fund
Follow The Peregrine Fund on Instagram and Facebook
North American Non-Lead Partnership
California Condor Recovery Program


Our Podcast Team:

Jessica Anderson, Kenny Coogan, and Alyssa Warner
Music: “Hustle” by Kevin MacLeod

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The Mother Earth News and Friends podcasts are a production of Ogden Publications.

Ogden Publications strives to inspire “can-do communities,” which may have different locations, backgrounds, beliefs, and ideals. The viewpoints and lifestyles expressed within Ogden Publications articles are not necessarily shared by the editorial staff or policies but represent the authors’ unique experiences.

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