STANDING UP, STANDING TOGETHER

I am posting this here to spread the word about the importance of science in everyday life, with permission from the author.

Written for THE DAILY RECORD, Ellensburg, WA

Jim Huckabay

Column Title: “INSIDE THE OUTDOORS”

STANDING UP, STANDING TOGETHER

I hate it when I see a representative of one group of outdoor users taking shots at other groups of outdoor users. It reminds me of something Shari Fraker used to say. When I was executive director of the United Sportsmen Council of Colorado—some fifty different organizations—a few decades back, she was representing one of the bow hunting outfits. Over and over, as trappers and target shooters and trout fishermen and duck hunters and big game hunters haggled over an appropriate position to take on some proposed rule or regulation, she would remind us that we got together to support each other. “Together,” she might say, “we can ensure the future of our various outdoor enterprises for our descendants. Alone, fighting only for our own specific perspectives, we end up eating our young—and tomorrow won’t matter.”

In Tuesday’s paper, you probably read Ted Williams’ “Writers on the Range” piece about lead shot and bullets. He raised a number of points about lead poisoning in various critters, probable causes and the changes which have come about as a result of a variety of studies. His story was initially about improving conditions for condors as lead is phased out in condor range. Unfortunately, Mr. Williams, who is conservation editor of a fly fishing mag, was unable to resist the urge to slam Safari Club International over its “Sportsmen Against Hunger” program (whereby hunters donate some of their game meat to food pantries), even suggesting that the donated game meat was poisoning the poor who received it.

You may recall the reports late last year about the findings of Peregrine Fund board member William Cornatzer, a dermatologist, who collected a hundred one-pound packages of ground venison from food pantries in North Dakota, and used CT scans on the meat to find lead fragments. North Dakota did more testing at the University of Iowa, apparently finding that about sixty percent of the meat contained some quantity of lead. Cornatzer's sampling was not random, and a number of questions have been raised about its validity.

Obviously, lead is a concern for anyone—especially with regard to levels in kids. Still, I’ve been on the planet and playing science long enough that I know how often things are taken out of context and blown out of proportion. This is one of those cases, I think. I did a bit of a search.

The most food- and additive-conscious people with which I have played are the Europeans. Start googling “lead in game meat studies” and you quickly find a 2002 article in the European Food Research and Technology Journal, “Intake of lead from game meat - a risk to consumers' health?” Here’s the gist of the abstract: “…The effect of frequent game meat consumption on the blood lead levels of hunters, who are a high-risk lead exposure group, was studied. Blood lead levels of hunters and control subjects were measured using isotope dilution ICP-MS. …individual blood lead concentrations of the hunters did not correlate with the number of their weekly game meat meals. The blood lead levels were compared with a control group…of voluntary blood donors from the same region. …it was concluded that frequent consumption of wild game meat has no significant effect on blood lead levels. (Check out http://www.springerlink.com/content/bfpm6clj036w3vkw/.)

After the food bank flap, the North Dakota Department of Public Health studied 738 North Dakota residents. Eighty percent consumed wild game shot with lead, including deer and birds.

They found that participants who consumed wild game averaged .30 micrograms/dl more lead in their blood than those who did not. Those who ate game within a month of the study had higher lead blood levels than those who had not consumed it within a month. Here’s the kicker: all participants were well below the 25 micrograms/dl “level of intervention” for adults. And the participant average lead levels of 1.17 micrograms/dl were below the average American’s lead level of 1.60. Give me a break.

Instead of looking for ways to attack those who don’t “recreate” in the ways we like best or use tools we like, we need to be thinking ahead—and holistically—about how all of us are needed to create a future with real outdoor opportunity.

I often think about this poem, attributed to Pastor Martin Niemoeller, about the intellectuals’ lack of protest about the rise of Nazi power.

“First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out--because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the communists and I did not speak out--because I was not a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out--I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

[Copyright James L. Huckabay, 2009]

Jim Huckabay chairs the Department of Geography at Central and is the author of "WILD WINDS and Other Tales of Growing Up in the Outdoor West."