Lead has become a form of elemental wickedness. Pb: superstar of evil. Lead-free petrol has been one of the great consumer advances in recent years, and car manufacturers are engaged in an advertising war of ever more competitive greenness. There can hardly be a person in all Europe who is not aware that lead is most frightfully bad for you.
And yet there is a socially acceptable pursuit that dumps an estimated 2,000 tons of lead all over the nicest bits of environment we have left, and does so every year. This comes in the form of lead shot. Shooters often miss their birds: but never mind, the lead shot they accidentally dump will kill in the long term just as efficiently as it does with a good bang.
The International Waterfowl and Wetlands Research Bureau meets in Brussels from June 13 to 15 and is likely to produce damning results of further research into the problem of lead poisoning. Shooters are always telling us they are the most conservationally minded people about (and just have a funny way of showing it). It will be interesting to see how the wildfowlers' lobby reacts to these findings.
For as long as wildfowlers use lead shot for their pleasures they must be regarded as major polluters. The amount of lead they discharge is large: what is more, it gets dumped where it can do most damage.
The detritus from wildfowlers' misses falls into the wetland that they are shooting up. From there, it gets picked up by birds. Wildfowl (and other birds) take in grit, which they hold in their gizzard and use to grind up food. Beaks have their uses but they are not much good for chewing: a gizzard full of grit does the job.
When a bird takes in lead with its grit it is literally poisoning itself. The bird gets ill, and often ends up dead. In most cases this is a slow job, lasting three weeks or so. In northern Europe, almost 20 per cent of diving ducks were found to have ingested lead: this rises to almost 60 per cent in the trigger-happy Mediterranean.
Brits like to consider themselves more civilised about guns than the Mediterraneans and the Americans. It was Tom Lehrer, the satirist, who wrote the national anthem of the American Hunting Man:
And there are ten stuffed heads in my trophy room right now - Two game-wardens, seven hunters and a pure-bred Jersey cow.
But in gun-crazy America, the use of lead shot will be made illegal in the 1991-92 season. In Canada, lead shot became illegal in selected areas last year. Which is the uncivilised side of the Atlantic now?
From now on, American shooters must use steel shot. Hunters are traditionally-minded people, and perhaps British hunters more than most. Steel, being much harder stuff, increases barrel wear significantly.
But I am reminded of the fishing people: another bunch of traditionalists. For years, the diehards insisted that there was no "real" substitute for lead weights. Abandoned lead weights killed wildfowl, particularly mute swans. In 1986, the sale of lead weights was banned. Every year since then the Thames population of mute swans has risen. If fishers can survive such trauma, so can shooters.
The relationship between conservation organisations and shooters has always been complex. For example, the RSPB's charter forbids it to take any stand against shooting. Shooters always like to say that they are better guardians of the countryside than any do-gooders. Now they have a chance to prove it.
The issue puts their conservation credentials on trial. There are plenty of worse polluters in the world: but wildfowlers are dumping large quantities of poison exactly where it hurts most. Wetlands are a precious, vulnerable and dwindling habitat. Shooters must stop poisoning such places if we are to avoid considering the phrase "responsible hunter" a classic oxymoron.
