6/20/2016 4 Comments The Polar BearsHunters of the Polar Bear commonly used dog teams to distract the bears, allowing the hunter to spear the bear or shoot it with arrows at much closer range. Almost all parts of any captured animals that they killed had a use. The fur was used in to make trousers and, to make galoshes-like outer footwear called tobok. The meat is edible, despite the fact that there is some risk of trichinosis which is a parasitic disease caused by roundworms. The fat from the Polar Bears, was used in food and also as a fuel for lighting homes. Sinews which is a piece of tough fibrous tissue uniting muscle to bone or bone to bone; a tendon or ligament, were used as thread for sewing clothes. The gallbladder and sometimes even the heart were dried and powdered for medicinal purposes. The larger canine teeth were valued highly as talismans which is an object, that is thought to have magic powers and to bring good luck. The only part that was not used was the liver, as it has a high concentration of vitamin A, which is highly poisonous. In Russia, polar bear furs were already being commercially traded in the 14th century, though it was low value compared to the Arctic fox or even ‘reindeer fur’. There are estimates that suggest from the beginning of the 18th century, roughly 400 to 500 animals were harvested annually, with the highest numbers up to 1,300 to 1,500 animals in the early 20th century. There were concerns over the future survival of the Polar Bear which led to the development of national regulations on polar bear hunting that began in the mid-1950s. The Soviet Union had banned all hunting in 1956 and Canada began imposing hunting quotas which allows a predetermined number of hunters to participate in killing them in 1968. Norway then passed a series of increasingly strict regulations starting in 1965 to 1973, and has since then completely banned hunting. The United States began regulating hunting of these animals in 1971 and then adopted the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972. In 1973, the International Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears was signed by all five nations whose territory is inhabited by these creatures: Canada, Denmark, Norway, the Soviet Union, and the United States.
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