On Nov. 17, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed a petition to ban the use of lead ammunition and fishing tackle on all property managed by the National Park Service. According to the petition, this includes more than 51 million acres open to hunting, comprising more than 60% of the land area in the system.
The PEER petition cites the 2022 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hunt/fish rule, which began the process of banning lead ammo and tackle on national wildlife refuges this past summer. As with the USFWS hunt/fish rule, the PEER petition argues for this broad and expansive rule – a total ban – due to lead’s known toxicity but fails to cite specific evidence of population-level effects on particular NPS properties of concern.