I thought it was interesting that CBD, the Sierra Club, and the Grand Canyon Wildlands Council are suing the FS apparently for RCRA violations… yet it seems from this Courthouse News Service article that they are already suing the EPA. since it appears that EPA is in charge of RCRA, and if in fact lead is bad for all the mammal-eating birds, then why should one national forest become the target?
Here’s what they said:
“Lead ingestion and poisoning from ammunition sources has been documented in many avian predators and scavengers that inhabit Forest Service land in Arizona, such as California condors, bald and golden eagles, northern goshawks, ferruginous hawks, turkey vultures, and common ravens,” the complaint states. “Many bird species are exposed to spent lead ammunition when they consume mammals that have been shot with lead ammunition but not retrieved and later die in the wild. These ‘shot but not retrieved’ carcasses are a food source for wild, free-ranging California condors in Arizona.”
The groups add: “The ingestion of spent lead ammunition, even in minute amounts, by wildlife causes many adverse behavioral, physiological and biochemical health effects, including seizures, lethargy, progressive weakness, reluctance to fly or inability to sustain flight, weight loss leading to emaciation, and death. The existence of such adverse health effects makes the wildlife experiencing them more susceptible to other forms of mortality, such as predation.”
The Center For Biological Diversity filed a similar lawsuit in the District of Columbia. There, it seeks judicial review of the Environmental Protection Agency’s refusal to regulate the use of lead ammunition on public lands.
It seems to me like it should be clear where the authority to regulate lead ammunition rests, and the US taxpayer should only have to pay for one agency’s attorneys to defend it. Hopefully, I’m missing something here.