Grylls in hot water after boiling frog for TV dinner
Bear Grylls is facing a fine of up to €2500 (NZ$4140) after killing and boiling a frog in a Bulgarian nature reserve for an American television series.
For Grylls – who has previously polished off a rabbit with a stick, clubbed a colony of bats before stomping up and down on them, and persuaded a celebrity from Made In Chelsea to stab a crocodile – it was just another day at the office.
In 2017, he took American dancer Derek Hough into the Rila Mountains, in Bulgaria’s largest national park, to film an episode of Running Wild With Bear Grylls. In one scene, the pair snacked on a frog before going for a swim in a remote lake.
Bulgarian officials said Grylls, Hough and their production team had violated local laws and could be liable to pay fines totalling €10,000 (NZ$16,500).
The Rilas are the highest mountain range in the Balkans, and their rare flora and fauna are heavily protected. More than two-thirds of the park’s 172 kinds of vertebrate are on the Bulgarian ‘‘red list’’ of endangered species. It is not clear whether Grylls’s and Hough’s amphibian lunch was on the list.
Grylls and his team had been briefed on the park’s rules and were accompanied by government employees. The environment ministry said it was investigating whether its workers failed to intervene. Grylls has yet to respond to the claims.
In 2015, British broadcaster Channel 4 apologised after contestants on Grylls’ show The Island killed and ate an endangered crocodile in the mistaken belief that it was a common caiman.
– The Times