Quote:
the hunters’ group Project Gutpile
I've never heard of "project gutpile" and suspect it may be made up of a few people who are casual hunters who are also environmental activists.
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I suspect it is probably an astroturf group designed to give the effort "credibility" so that they can tell Congress "Look, hunters want this too!' Looking it up, I can only find two members of the group: Anthony Prieto and Paul Andreano.
Paul Andreano has a personal website and is a raptor biologist. For someone who is supposedly interested in hunting, he doesn't discuss it on his website. Anthony Prieto appears to run the Project Gutpile blog, which hasn't published anything since 2008 (hmmm, wonder what happened in 2008 that caused it to stop publishing? Its last item was a post about how Bush was relaxing EPA protections - darn him!). He has a similar article purporting him to be an enthusiastic hunter and touting his group in Audobon Magazine; but as far as I can tell these two guys are pretty much the entire organization.
My main concerns are:
1. Is it actually a problem, and if so, in what conditions is it a problem?
2. Does the solution actually address the problem?
3. Is the "nontoxic" replacement for lead actually less toxic than lead? (look at the Army's problems with "nontoxic" green ammo testing in Massachusetts - they ended up polluting the water table there with much more deadly poisons than a 100 years worth of lead use would have done).
My major suspicion is that this really has blank-all to do with wildlife conservation and is really about putting a friendlier face on gun control.