Condor population dwindles due to lead bullets in diet

Condors in California are dying out due to exposure to lead from bullets.

Researchers at UC Santa Cruz found that 30 percent of blood samples from condors had lead exposure, typically from the carcasses of animals shot with lead bullets.

The news comes even after decades of conservation management, including a ban on bullets that are poisonous to the feeding birds.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, the study found that 20 percent of those birds tested had lead poisoning so severe that they required medical intervention to stay alive.

Science reported that since 1982, conservation efforts have brought the California condor population up from 22 to 400.

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But the main threat to the population – lead bullets in the birds' diet – has yet to be addressed in full.

"We will never have a self-sustaining wild condor population if we don't solve this problem," said the study's lead author Myra Finkelstein, a research toxicologist at UC Santa Cruz, in a press release.

"Currently, California condors are tagged and monitored, trapped twice a year for blood tests and when necessary treated for lead poisoning in veterinary hospitals, and they still die from lead poisoning on a regular basis."

Unlike many birds, condors feed on the carcasses of other animals.

Excessive lead in the bird causes its digestive system to shut down leading to eventual starvation.

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)