Don Baccus writes:

> I know nothing of lead pickup by aquatic plants, but assume the
> folks studying the phenomena of lead poisoning in waterfowl have
> looked at this, as it is an obvious concern since this is what
> most of the ducky-poos are eating.

I don't think the problem is with ducks' food. I think the problem
arise from the fact they use little pebbles, called grit, to crush
their food.
Not only will they pick lead pellets "by chance," but, in areas with
little or no pebbles, they will *deliberately* pick them for it's about
their only source for grit.
In these conditions, the lead pellets will erode quickly from abrasion
in the ducks' crop, thus leading (!) to the poisoning of the already
brain-challenged (as Don said) duck.

BTW, there isn't any law in France to ban the use of lead shots either.
Too costly if you listen to the *very* powerful hunting lobby. I don't
know how smart hunters are here, but in France hunters, specially
waterfowl hunters, are *canonical* red-necks ! They don't have a clue
of what a population is ; they will just collect as many birds as they
can, and then whine about the decreasing population of waterfowl (I
almost don't exaggerate here, sighhh).
This little parenthesis partly explains my signature :-(

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A bird in the bush is better than two in the hand.

Serge Le Huitouze Intelligent Software Group
email: serge at cs.sfu.ca School of Computing Science
tel: (604) 291-5423 Simon Fraser University
fax: (604) 291-3045 Burnaby, B.C., V5A 1S6 CANADA