The Adirondack Council

News Release

Released, Sunday, March 31, 2002

ALBANY, N.Y. -- With the opening day of trout season in New York arriving on Monday, organizations hoping to protect loons and other waterfowl announced they will operate lead sinker exchange programs in the Adirondack Park this summer. They will ask anglers to turn in lead sinkers of a half ounce or less and receive free nontoxic replacements.

“This is our way of helping to spread the word that lost and discarded small lead sinkers are one of the leading causes of waterfowl poisoning deaths, especially for loons,” said Adirondack Council Acting Executive Director Bernard C. Melewski. “As a life-long fisherman, I learned only last year how toxic small lead sinkers can be. There are lots of other alternatives, like glass, tin and tungston. But too few people know about them.”

“This is a very avoidable problem,” said William C. Cooke, Director of Government Relations for Audubon New York. “We will be working with the Council this summer to provide alternatives to fishermen who visit Elk Lake in Essex County. We hope there will be many more to follow.”

Elk Lake Lodge will host the site at its fish-cleaning station. The Audubon/Adirondack Council program at Elk Lake is expected to begin in May.

At the same time, the Adirondack Cooperative Loon Program (ACLP) has enlisted roughly 30 retail stores in the Adirondack Park that are willing to host a similar display and exchange program. ACLP is sponsored by the Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks, Wildlife Conservation Society, NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation, the Audubon Society of New York State (not the same as Audubon New York) and the BioDiversity Research Institute.

State Legislation Would Ban Sales of Small Sinkers

Both houses of the state Legislature have introduced bills that would ban the sale of lead sinkers of one-half ounce or less statewide (A8683b/S4786c) in two years. The ban would not include artificial lures, weighted lines, weighted flies or jigheads.

Waterfowl, including the state’s rare and reclusive loon population, consume pebbles to help them grind and digest their food. Lead sinkers a half-ounce or smaller are easily mistaken for pebbles by birds. Loons, for example, die after ingesting as little as 0.3 grams of lead. Larger sinkers are rarely mistaken for pebbles and are rarely involved in lead poisonings.

“Similar bans have worked very well in Maine and New Hampshire,” said Robert Foster, Legislative Director for Citizens Campaign for the Environment, which has been working for passage of the bill alongside the Adirondack Council and Audubon New York.

“Water bird poisonings dropped off right away,” Foster said. “Most of the people we’ve talked to agree that the ban would be a common-sense solution. We were even more pleased to see that the New York State Conservation Council, which represents the interests of hunters and anglers in New York, had endorsed the ban on the sale of such sinkers. That will be a big boost for the bill’s chances of passing.”

“The funniest thing about this is that the two lead sinker exchange programs -- the Audubon/Adirondack Council plan and the ACLP plan -- are not linked and were developed independently from one another,” Melewski said. “We all came up with the same idea in different places at the same time. Our program will be outdoors where people are fishing and theirs will be primarily indoors, where people are shopping. Together, we should save some birds and educate a lot of people. But we can’t get to everyone we need to. The ban is the best way to really protect loons.”

Note: Loons that nest in the Adirondack Park, the Great Lakes region and on Long Island are common loons. According to the most recent survey, there are roughly 1,000 common loons remaining in New York State and about 400 of them live in the Adirondack Park. They are listed as a “species of special concern” by state officials.