A friend of this blog, Bill Krohn of the US Geological Service, University of Maine, published in 2005 an insightful look at Maine's wildlife in the 2nd half of the 19th century. His Northeastern Naturalist thesis focused on the meticulous journals of Manly Hardy, a successful Maine Naturalist and businessman whose chief source of income was through the fur and hide business.
Manly published 160 articles and letters on his travels and observations of the wild creatures of Central and Northern Maine and Eastern Canada. In Manly's time, 350 Years from when the first Europeans set foot in North America(circa AD 1500), The Northern Forest of Maine and Canada still was home to Woodland Caribou and Lynx.
Manly's 1858 Journal revealed that the animal matrix in this part of North America was characteristic of the boreal forests of Northern Canada rather than the more temperate ecosystems now found there. Lynx, Moose and Caribou were all part of the fauna template mid 1800.....................although within 50 years, many of these creatures would be extirpated or shrunken to remnant populations.
Historical accounts like those of Manly help current day biologists in their recommendations to Fish and Wildlife Agencies on what animal re-introductions make optimum sense in our quest to re-wild our still open spaces.
If in the mid 1800's the Caribou and lynx were considered widespread and reasonably abundant, think what New England likely featured between the years 1500-1800 in the way of Wild America.......................Cougar, perhaps both the gray and eastern wolf , bobcats, lynx caribou, moose, elk, deer, beaver, marten, fisher................perhaps even some woodland bison.
These type of historical first hand accounts of Wild America at the time of European contact are some of my favorite forays......................Pre blog, I emailed to many of you other first hand accounts from 18th and 19th century frontiersmen, soldiers, statesmen and naturalists..........................
If any readers of this blog have any further manuscripts of this type to share with any of us, I ask you to email me with this information so that all of us can share in the vicarious experience of being there "live and in person".
I believe many of us would long for the chance to "time warp"(at least for a little while) back into the AD 1000 through 1800 period to see what this Country looked like prior to full out European expansion................realizing that the Indians were not environmental puritans......................they too overused land and exploited resources...................yet population levels were of minimous levels so as to be able to support a Serengeti wildlife suite that we can only dream about in our 500 million plus USA, Canada and Mexico homes of today.
Bring on the history........................share your source materials.................let us all be able to soak them in and urge our Govenors to set aside enough land for some of natures design to return and multiply.
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