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What an interesting list.

1983 study of Leghorn & Japanese quail
1983 study of earthworms
1955 a study that used a fluroscope!
2001 Spanish Eagles
2003 sea birds eating lead paint chips
1983 American Kestrals.

Really very impressive. So, how about all the copper those earthworms ingested?

Really, if you are going to pull bibliographies from works published on the net, at least be a little more selective. A study of earthworms.... Geez!

Pete

S. Dodd Hughes,

Having seen you in a past photo, you are a much funnier guy than I would have guessed. 'Thanks' for some levity on a thread that could desparately use some at this point.


Rob

I'm a bird watcher as a hobby, and really do care for all forms of life. I can't recall ever reading Ben refer to anything being better for the birds? Seems like it is mostly about being controversial and impressing folks with his knowledge.
I hate being bullshitted, Ben.
MFWP is probably already aware of Ben's brand of bull.

One good thing about MFWP, they normally make decisions based on science, (except of course, when it comes to buffalo).

Here is some interesting reading more to the point for those having trouble connecting dots....

Scheuhammer, A.M., Rogers, C.A., Bond, D., 1999. Elevated lead
exposure in American woodcock (Scolopax minor) in eastern
Canada. Arch. Environ. Contam. Toxicol. 36, 334–340.
Sharley, A.J., Best, L.W., Lane, J., Whitehead, P., 1992. An overview of lead poisoning in Australian waterfowl and implications for
management. In: Pain, D.J., (Ed.), Lead Poisoning in Waterfowl.
IWRB Spec. Pub. 16, Slimbridge, pp. 73–77.
Snyder, N.F., Snyder, H.A., Lincer, J.L., Reynolds, R.T., 1973.
Organochlorines, heavy metals, and the biology of North
American accipiters. Bioscience 23, 300–305.
Stendell, R.C., Artmann, J.W., Martin, E., 1980. Lead residues in
Sora rails from Maryland. J. Wildlife Manage. 44, 525–527.
Stone, W.B., Butkas, S.A., 1978. Lead poisoning in wild turkey
(Meleagris gallopavo). New York Fish Game J. 25, 169.
Szymczak, M.R., 1978. Steel shot use on a goose hunting area in
Canada. Wildlife Soc. Bull. 6, 217–225.
Scheuhammer, A.M., Bond, D.E., Burgess, N.M., Rodrigue, J., 2003.
Lead and stable isotope ratios in soil, earthworms and bones
of American woodcock (Scolopax minor) from eastern Canada.
Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 22, 2585–2591.
Scheuhammer, A.M., Norris, S.L., 1995. A review of the environmentalimpacts of lead shotshell ammunition and lead fishing
weights in Canada. Can. Wildlife Serv. Occasional Paper 88.
Scheuhammer, A.M., Norris, S.L., 1996. The ecotoxicology of lead
shot and lead fishing weights. Ecotoxicology 5, 279–295.

SDH, you brought up an interesting point. I was deep into "connecting the dots" as Ben Deeble suggested, trying to figure the metal eating earthworm connection to a large owl in the Canadian Tiaga. Was Ben trying to "add levity" and we all missed it. Or is it really about bullshit, making noise, being controversial, and trying to impress folks, maybe hopefully leading to the next funding grant ?

I do hope that MFWP can see through all of this.

The problem with many, if not all of these studies is that they are biased and flawed from the beginning. A study needs large samples, long terms of study, double blinds to off set any recorder bias if possible, clear review of study material by people not in the study who can offer a honest evaluation of the results. Too often reliance on correlations as facts flaw the results and conclusion reached.

If you go into a study with a fixed viewpoint, it is too easy to set the study up in a way that almost excluded all data outside your desired findings. I have seen it often in studies my wife and I have reviewed for publication. People who do these studies can be intent in proving their viewpoint to the point that they loose perspective. I saw one study that was done three times before it "came out right" and they just threw out the first two data sets a being "flawed". The only reason I knew about the first two data sets was I had been asked to massage the numbers by one of the people who ran the first study. They could not be massaged and they got dumped.

Sample size is often overlooked. One site, two sites or even three sites is too small. Give me 50 to 100 sites for a large sample. One year is too short for most studies. Give me decades to see real trends. How many studies get ruined by one person interpolating all the data with a minor or major bias? A ten percent error in data may be a extreme swing in results in small sample studies.

My pet peeve is the correlations that can become facts if repeated often enough. Understand that most studies cite others before them as proof that they are on the right tract. If one of these studied is off then many of the studies after them can be off if they do not go back and prove the early studies were wrong. So an accepted but wrong fact gets repeated over and over again and becomes an accepted fact when it is not a fact at all.

For example if I published the "correlation" that 81% lung cancer victims carried butane lighters for 20 plus years and draw the conclusions that butane lighters are bad for your health others will cite this "fact". Repeated often enough and that fact will get lost in the other facts and become a commonly held view based on long accepted studies. Look at the data first, look at the way the study was done, look at the number and quality of other studies cited. Then go one step further and look at those studies and see if any of them cite their own works or those of the first study you were reading. I have seen studies cite back and forth so often you that you get to feeling that all the studies were done a just a very few people and they seem to almost be working out of one office or with just one funding source. The money dictates the outcome. You would not pay for a study if it does not support your viewpoint.

Any study that cites their own previous publications is to be taken with a grain of salt. Any study who cites the same two or three previous authors over and over again is to be taken with a larger grain of salt. Any study done in an area the size of your backyard, in just one year, that does not include more than 30 test subjects is to be taken with a even larger grain of salt. Any study who does not tell you the person or group funding the study is not to be trusted at all. Follow the money, find the reason for the study.

I here by nominate a commitee to discover why we in Iowa don't have any birds at all to speak of...

Oh wait it's gotta be the lead shot doesn't it? DEAD WRONG

It has been proven that habitat loss is the number one reason for birds in a massive decline, weather has some to do with it, but we simply don't have the habitat to support these upland birds anymore. Farm chemicals can't help but that is just speculation on my part. With all the money we as sportsman spend to pursue our hobby we should have better opportunity. Perhaps we are going to have to start a "country club" like golf enthusists and tennis gurus do. We have shooting preserves where it's "put and take" but we could try to start something to restablish wild birds. I know each and everyone of you belongs to a conservation organization of some sort IE Pheasents Forever, but much of the money we donate/spend with them is lost in "administration" Long and short of it, sure lead shot probably has a MINUTE effect on the overall bird population but I would venture an educated guess that the impacts of lead shot are about 1/100000th of the problem. I contribute the decline of upland game and birds of the like to an extreme habitat loss all in the name of a profit.

Mind yourselves on the point that there is a reason for this "study" being funded, the persons conducting the study will tell you they "care for the good of the planet" but in my expirience 90% of them are coming up with cock-eyed theories to justify their jobs. They need funding to keep their incomes. Hey they gotta eat too. I just wish that all the money spent on studies could be diverted to creating habitat. It wouldn't suprise me if a company such as Environmetal was behind a little of this, they have a HUGE stake in the race. I understand everyone's concern about rediculously expensive ammo but money talks yadda yadda. If the big corporates want lead banned, they'll get it and a few scientists will make a good living along the way. Let's all hope common sense prevails...

Yep, lose of habitat is the biggest problem and it isn't stopping in any foreseeable future. Notice just recently they tore down a corn field to put up a shopping mall with stores so small vendors can't possibly compete and therfore survive. I give it 5 maybe at best 10 years.
In ten years the property will be for sale or lease and the commercial mortgage will be in default. To make up for it they''ll tear down another cornfield and build another mall to pay off the money they lost in their previous venture and it will go on and on and on.
And all the while they'll be sitting in their offices in their leather overstuffed chairs crying over all that lead poisoning all those helpless animals.

I googled this up and here is the abstract:

Abstract An initial survey of lead levels in American woodcock (Scolopax minor) from Wisconsin was conducted in 1998 using wing bones from hunter-donated woodcock. The results of this initial survey indicated that young-of-year woodcock were accumulating extremely high levels of lead in their bones. Similar collections were made (using steel shot) between 1999 and 2001. The combined results of this collection indicated that 43.4% of young-of-year woodcock (range 1.5–220.0 μg/g dry wt) and 70% of woodcock chicks (range 9.6–93.0 μg/g dry wt) had bone lead levels in the elevated range (>20 μg/g dry wt). Blood samples were collected from chicks at a site considered elevated based on bone lead results (Mead Wildlife Area) and a site considered background (Navarino Wildlife Area). These samples were analyzed for lead concentration and aminolevulinic acid dehydratase activity. The mean blood lead concentrations of woodcock chicks from both sites did not reach levels that are considered elevated in waterfowl (>0.200 μg/ml). However, blood lead concentrations of chicks from the Mead Wildlife Area were significantly higher than lead levels in chicks from Navarino Wildlife Area (p = 0.002). Although the ultimate sources of lead exposure for Wisconsin woodcock currently remain unidentified, anthropogenic sources cannot be ruled out. Our results indicate that elevated lead exposure in Wisconsin woodcock is common and begins shortly after hatch.

I know of a study showing that urban pigeons had higher blood levels of lead than rural pigeons. Now how do we know what caused the elevated blood levels of any bird?

Flushing birds taken around a dove shooting hole have a much higher chance of ingesting lead than ones taken out in the prairie. If there is some loss of grouse, bobwhite, huns and pheasant to ingested lead shot what about to raptors, snakes, skunks, coyotes, bobcats, hunters, etc...

My bobwhite hunting grounds have been used for at least fifty years for this purpose. Same thing for dove hunting, primarily around a windmill and around a pond. I don't hesitate to eat my bobwhites, no matter where they come from on the lease
Even if lead shot injestion caused one percent of the eventually 100% of bird deaths so what?

The last time this subject came up on the board I went through several of the studies Grouse Guy posted and that were available on the internet. I found two where the bodies of dead wild birds were tested. The rest were rehashes of the earlier field
tests of where captive birds were fed lead shot and then analyzed.


Mike

Mike, good stuff. It was two or three years ago, wasn't it, that South Dakota had the "best pheasant season ever" . Since lead shot has been used there "forever", it seems impossible to believe what Ben Deeble wants others to believe.