Extinction
The first Europeans to come in contact with the Mexican grizzly bear were the conquistadors in the 16th century when Francisco Vásquez de Coronado went on an expedition to find the Seven Cities of Gold. His trudge began in Mexico City in 1540 and went north to New Mexico and the Buffalo Plains in the modern-day U.S. states of Texas and Kansas. Because bears hunted the cattle from time to time they were considered a pest by farmers. The Mexican grizzly bear was trapped, shot and poisoned, and had already become scarce in the 1930s. Its former range decreased to the three isolated mountains Cerro Campano, Santa Clara, and Sierra del Nido 80 km north of Chihuahua in the state of Chihuahua. By 1960 only 30 of them were left. Despite its protected status the hunting continued. By 1964 the Mexican grizzly bear was regarded as extinct. After rumours of some surviving individuals on a ranch at the headwaters of the Yaqui River in the state of Sonora in 1969, American biologist Dr. Carl B. Koford went on a three-month survey but without success.
Read more about this topic: Mexican Grizzly Bear
Famous quotes containing the word extinction:
“The problems of this world are only truly solved in two ways: by extinction or duplication.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Man is an over-complicated organism. If he is doomed to extinction he will die out for want of simplicity.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“I wish all men to be free. I wish the material prosperity of the already free which I feel sure the extinction of slavery would bring.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)