Distribution
Within the former Soviet Union, it occurs in Transcaucasia, in Azerbaijan Talysh region, Karabakh, Northern Armenia, Abkhazia and Kopet Dag. Outside the ex-USSR, it occurs in Iran, Iraq and Turkey. It is extinct in Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and, more recently, in Syria.
Like many large mammals, the Syrian brown bear population is declining due to habitat loss, and poaching. They are a popular target for big game hunters in the Middle East and in Asia. In addition, bear bile (ursodeoxycholic acid) is a valuable commodity because of its use in traditional Chinese medicine as an assumed cure for rheumatism, poor eyesight and gall stones.
Read more about this topic: Syrian Brown Bear
Famous quotes containing the word distribution:
“My topic for Army reunions ... this summer: How to prepare for war in time of peace. Not by fortifications, by navies, or by standing armies. But by policies which will add to the happiness and the comfort of all our people and which will tend to the distribution of intelligence [and] wealth equally among all. Our strength is a contented and intelligent community.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The man who pretends that the distribution of income in this country reflects the distribution of ability or character is an ignoramus. The man who says that it could by any possible political device be made to do so is an unpractical visionary. But the man who says that it ought to do so is something worse than an ignoramous and more disastrous than a visionary: he is, in the profoundest Scriptural sense of the word, a fool.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)