Did you know that there are a group of frogs in South America known as 'poison-dart frogs'? There are different types of frogs within the group but most of them are brightly coloured and have black spots. They are dangerous to touch because they have poison on their skin. Native people in the area used to rub the poison onto their arrows before hunting.
Why the bear hunt?
Why the bear hunt? Grizzly bears no longer roam freely from the
Arctic to the Plateaus of Mexico because their habitat is shrinking
and their numbers are dropping. Yet, British Columbia and Alberta
still allow an annual bear hunt. The hunt has been criticized on a
moral level because many believe that the hunters are killing
mainly for sport or related purposes. At a scientific level, the
objection centers around the difficulty of estimating how
vulnerable the grizzly bear population really is. The killing
quotas are based on the evaluation of the grizzly population which
varies from a low of 4,000 to a high of 13,000. Counting grizzly
bears is difficult because they travel alone and may roam hundreds
and even thousands of kilometers. An accurate count is
time-consuming and costly and involves searching the grizzlies out,
sedating and tagging them. Another danger facing the grizzly bears
is their low rates of reproduction - the lowest of any land mammal.
Their rate of reproduction plus the shrinking of their natural
habitat has caused all countries except Russia, U.S. (Alaska) and
Canada to classify them as endangered. With the uncertainty of
exactly how large the population is, their low levels of
reproduction and the fact the hunt serves no legitimate purpose,
why should it continue?
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