Clair Patterson

This kea was banded as a juvenile near the sea at Pohara, Golden Bay during July 2020. He was named by Paul Henare from Kūmānu Environmental (Nelmac) who sponsor and support the Kea Conservation Trust. Paul has written this wonderful description for this kea after coming out with kea the team banding and lead testing kea at Golden Bay. This is a wonderfully apt tribute to a man who helped brought global awareness of the tremendous impact of lead (Pb) on the environment, something which is also hugely detrimental to kea and other wildlife. "I gave this Kea the name Clair Patterson in honour of my favourite but little-known scientist from last century. He was an American geochemist that was given a seemingly simple task of dating the Earth by studying the uranium to lead decay in meteoritic rock samples. All of his data came back with inconsistent conclusions, the lead levels fluctuated and showed too much lead. This caused him to create the very first sterile laboratory/clean room. With this new lab he was able to give the Earth the age of 4.55 billion years old. The next piece of his story is why I thank and truly admire Clair. Having done what he set out to do, he then turned his attention to the question of where all this lead came from, as lead is a terrible neurotoxin that adversely affects many forms of life. He found that the addition of lead in gasoline had spiked the amount of lead in the atmosphere even though the big oil company - Ethyl Corporation stated that atmospheric lead levels were normal. He gathered data from ice-core samples and the world's oceans and finally proved that we were poisoning ourselves by pumping lead in to the atmosphere and that the rate was many times higher than normal. So, after 20 years of lobbying and campaigning Clair finally succeeded in getting lead removed from petrol in 1986". Update 2022: in an ironic and horrific twist, this kea was shot (with a lead pellet), its body left to rot. For over a hundred years, kea were persecuted - 150,000 were shot in a government-led bounty scheme (due to causing injury to sheep in the high country). Even though this is now an illegal offence, while a rare and unacceptable event, still to this day, some kea are still shot by people simply because they annoy them.

Sponsor

Kūmānu Environmental