{"id":354540,"date":"2026-06-10T11:30:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T11:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/354540\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T11:30:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T11:30:12","slug":"californias-endangered-condors-have-a-surprising-new-foe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/354540\/","title":{"rendered":"California\u2019s endangered condors have a surprising new foe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Invasive wild pigs are\u00a0on the rise\u00a0in California,\u00a0and so is wild pig hunting, especially in the central\u00a0flock\u2019s\u00a0range. But because they\u2019re a generally considered to be a nuisance species rather than big game,\u00a0which typically has stricter regulations, people hunting them might not be aware that they can\u2019t use lead shot to do so,\u00a0says\u00a0<a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/www.yuroktribe.org\/wildlife-department-staff\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" dir=\"ltr\">Chris West<\/a>, a senior wildlife biologist with the Yurok Tribe\u00a0who was not involved with the study.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">\u201cSome of these people may be in violation of the law, but not because they\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0want to follow the law.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0because they\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0know,\u201d West\u00a0says. Big game hunters\u00a0generally pay\u00a0attention to\u00a0year-to-year\u00a0regulation changes, but\u00a0land managers or ranchers\u00a0who\u00a0use firearms to control pest wildlife populations might not\u00a0check as often,\u00a0he\u00a0says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">So\u00a0Bakker added the numbers of\u00a0pig hunting\u00a0tags claimed each year\u00a0to the model. Suddenly, the numbers made sense.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">\u201cLo and behold, that was such a clear predictor of the increased lead exposure for the central flock,\u201d Bakker says. When more pig hunting\u00a0happened, more condors\u00a0died from\u00a0lead poisoning. For the researchers, that suggests lead is still being used to control wild pig populations, despite\u00a0the\u00a0ban. But future research should keep exploring this potential relationship, including better data collection on wild pig populations and\u00a0hunting\u00a0and using environmental DNA swabs to home in on condors\u2019 diets, Bakker says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Invasive wild pigs are\u00a0on the rise\u00a0in California,\u00a0and so is wild pig hunting, especially in the central\u00a0flock\u2019s\u00a0range. But because&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,86319,144546,9,8,144545],"class_list":["post-354540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-condors","tag-california-condors-lead-poisoning","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-condors-lead-poisoning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}