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Partnership fights for ban on hunting with lead ammo
California bill A.B. 711 requires the use of non-lead ammunition in all hunting of mammals, birds, and other wildlife. Audubon California, The Humane Society of the United Sates, and Defenders of Wildlife joined forces to get the bill passed.
“Our three organizations worked together on a 2008 bill that limited use of lead ammunition in about 20% of California,” says Jennifer Fearing, California senior state director of The Humane Society of the United States. “A.B. 711 would extend this requirement to the rest of the state.”
Garrison Frost, director of marketing and communications for Audubon California, says lead poisoning is a leading cause of death among wildlife that feeds on animals killed by lead ammunition. In addition, lead ammunition that seeps into the food chain, watershed, and overall environment poses a broader treat to human health.
RARE FERRETS NEED MORE LAND TO SURVIVE THE PLAGUE
The black-footed ferret is one of the most endangered mammals in North America, but new research suggests that these charismatic critters can persist if conservationists think big enough.
Decades of human persecution (e.g., poisoning) of the ferret’s favorite prey, prairie dogs, and severe outbreaks of plague and distemper led to its extinction in the wild in 1987.
Since then, thousands of captive-raised ferrets have been released across North America, and at least four wild populations have been successfully reestablished.
However, a new factor threatens to undermine these hard-fought conservation gains: the continued eastward spread of the exotic bacterial disease plague, which is a quick and efficient killer of prairie dogs, and is caused by the same microbe that is implicated in the Black Death pandemics of the Middle Ages.
Using a new multi-species computer modeling approach, researchers have linked models of plague, prairie dogs, and black-footed ferrets to explore the consequences of ecological interactions in ways not possible using standard methods.
The results of this study, published in Journal of Applied Ecology, suggest that the continued survival of black-footed ferret populations requires landscapes larger than conservationists previously thought, and intensive management actions to reduce plague transmission.
OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED NEWS
- Chesil Beach: Dead and oil-covered birds still washing up [England]
- Scientists to uncover secret life of otters
- Necropsies on beached striped dolphins leave more questions than answers [Oregon, USA]
- Pneumonia plaguing southern Nevada bighorn sheep
- Deer harvest bounces back from viral outbreak [Delaware, USA]
- Large fish have disappeared from vast tracts of Australian coast, survey shows
- Chronic wasting case investigation follows standard procedures [Wisconsin, USA]
- Chile: Owls drafted in to fight deadly hantavirus
- Ticks Infected with Lyme Disease and New Pathogen Found in California Parks [USA]
- Research Prevents Zoonotic Feline Tularemia By Finding Influential Geospatial Factors
- Upstream interventions may provide options to contain emerging pathogens at source
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