After the Skin Trade: teacher key

Black Caimans, grade 12 edition, written for 12th grade and up. The black caiman was hunted until far fewer were left in the Amazon's rivers. Read how people now protect it, count it and judge what its return means.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. What did hunting do to black caiman numbers in the 20th century?
   • It cut them by approximately 99 percent, as an estimate (answer)
   • It had no effect
   • It doubled them
2. Since when has French Guiana fully protected the black caiman by law?
   • 1790
   • 1986 (answer)
   • 2013
3. What happened in Bolivia in 1990?
   • A ban on rivers began
   • A program began to breed black caimans and set them free (answer)
   • A dam was removed
4. What happened to piranhas and capybaras where black caimans became rare?
   • They became more common (answer)
   • They vanished
   • They grew larger
5. Why is a count in a drought hard to read?
   • The authors say it cannot show that the population grew (answer)
   • Caimans stop moving
   • Rivers become wider

Words

• exploitation: heavy use
• captivity: human care
• census: count of animals
• predators: animal hunters
• mercury: toxic metal