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GOOD HAVING YOU BACk
by : Franklin Burroughs; DOWN EAST MAGAZINE
OUR CHILDREN IN MAINE CREATED THIS MURAL(above)
After learning about Coyotes as the keystone carnivore …and coming to understand that all things are connected, the children from kindergarten to grade 8 created this most meaningful mural. Take a few moments to drink it in…. WOW!(source is the great coyotelivesinmaine.com blog by our biologist friend, Geri Visten)
By 1900, the following animals were extinct or nearly extinct in Maine and everywhere else east of the Mississippi: 1) any wild canid larger than a fox, 2) wild turkeys, 3) beavers, 4) Mountain Lions(Pumas)
We got here in 1968. A few wild canids larger than foxes had recently been shot or trapped up along the Canadian border, causing high excitement. You’d have thought they were werewolves or the Viet Cong.
photo by Jacques Tournel
A decade later, the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife transplanted 41 wild turkeys from Vermont into York County, down near the New Hampshire line. They did well enough for 33 of them to be trapped and transplanted into Waldo County four years later. There had not been wild turkeys in the state since about 1800. They might as well have been pterodactyls, insofar as local memory was concerned. Other states were undertaking similarly modest efforts.
photo by Jacques Tournel
A decade later, the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife transplanted 41 wild turkeys from Vermont into York County, down near the New Hampshire line. They did well enough for 33 of them to be trapped and transplanted into Waldo County four years later. There had not been wild turkeys in the state since about 1800. They might as well have been pterodactyls, insofar as local memory was concerned. Other states were undertaking similarly modest efforts.
Beavers were doing better than turkeys, but even so, most were in northern Maine. It would be several years before I actually saw one in the midcoast area. In the rest of the country, few, if any, had spread beyond the northernmost tier of states to repopulate their historical range.
photo by Shreve Stockton
Whitetail deer were doing better still. But their North American population, estimated to have been about 35 million when the Europeans arrived and down to about 300,000 by 1900, was still far, far below historic levels.
Today, from Maine to Florida and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, large wild canids (Eastern coyotes fortified with a bit of gray wolf DNA), wild turkeys, beavers, and whitetail deer are everywhere. Furthermore, they do not behave in the least like timid and traumatized refugees from oblivion. They act like they own the place — as though suburbs, city parks, vacant lots, golf courses, cornfields, flower beds, your hen house, and every wretched little stream or culvert across the length and breadth of this great and fruitful nation were their New Frontier, their Manifest Destiny, their City on a Hill.
They do not behave in the least like timid and traumatized refugees from oblivion. They act like they own the place.
In less than a century, the whitetail deer population has returned to approximately what it was when the first Europeans arrived; their range now greatly exceeds what it was then. Turkeys and beavers have come back from the dead; coywolves, or whatever we want to call them, clearly descend from the creature that has haunted the imaginations of townspeople and farmers and herdsmen and especially children more or less forever and that barely hangs on in the remotest parts of Eurasia — yet there one stands, atop some dumpster at the edge of some town, looking contemptuously down at you as though to say What’s your problem? It’s a free country, right?
pups at play
photo by Tim Springer
pups at play
photo by Tim Springer
Think of western Europe. Its wilderness disappeared long before ours. There may be a few enclaves where some of its once-impressive fauna — wolves, bears, beavers, the capercaillie, the Eurasian elk — survive as something more than game animals provided habitat and supplementary feed so they may be shot. But such enclaves are very scattered and very small. What has happened in the U.S. in the last half-century is not at all like that. In the most densely populated, longest settled sections of the country, we have exploding populations of animals that had been gone from them for time out of mind — in many places, since before the American Revolution.
By 1968, it had become clear that Future Shock — too much change too fast — was the human condition and would remain so. The past no longer provided any guidance. I have foreseen nothing of what has happened in the past 50 years; neither has anybody else. I certainly cannot say that the return of dispossessed mammals to their ancient haunts is the most important thing that has happened in my lifetime. But it does seem to me the unlikeliest, the most paradoxical, and the most pleasing.
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Meet the Scientist, Geri Vistein
As a Conservation Biologist here in Maine, my work focuses on carnivores and our relationship with them. In order for carnivores to survive and play their role effectively in the ecosystems of Maine, our communities need to be informed and knowledgeable about their ecology and value, and to understand and practice coexistence skills.
So, in addition to research and collaboration with fellow biologists here in Maine, I educate our communities throughout Maine about carnivores, and how we can coexist with them. I work toward this through creative outreach projects with artists, musicians, poets and puppeteers, and by presenting the powerpoint program, “Coyote~ America’s Songdog,” and other programs as well.
photo by Ellison photography
Coyote doing its lyme disease preventing job killing mice and rodents
I work with Land Trusts who seek to initiate greater biodiversity on the land they have protected by incorporating carnivores into their goals. By partnering with organizations, schools, and universities I support their efforts in offering children and young people experiential learning opportunities and innovative educational initiatives.
photo by Ellison photography
Coyote doing its lyme disease preventing job killing mice and rodents
I work with Land Trusts who seek to initiate greater biodiversity on the land they have protected by incorporating carnivores into their goals. By partnering with organizations, schools, and universities I support their efforts in offering children and young people experiential learning opportunities and innovative educational initiatives.
I received my undergraduate degree in Wildlife Biology from the University of Montana, and my Masters in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont. My Masters work focused on conflicts regarding the use of natural resources at Cape Cod National Seashore, and the social psychology of human belief systems. Prior to pursuing my Wildlife Degree, I had earned a Masters in Education.
photo by Shreve Stockton
While living in Montana I participated in research projects concerning carnivores: The Grizzly Bear DNA Study in and around Glacier National Park, The Elk Calf Mortality Study (determining the carnivores that caused their deaths) in the Blackfoot Valley of Montana, and a Snowshoe Hare Study (in reference to an ongoing Lynx study) in Yellowstone National Park.
photo by Shreve Stockton
While living in Montana I participated in research projects concerning carnivores: The Grizzly Bear DNA Study in and around Glacier National Park, The Elk Calf Mortality Study (determining the carnivores that caused their deaths) in the Blackfoot Valley of Montana, and a Snowshoe Hare Study (in reference to an ongoing Lynx study) in Yellowstone National Park.
In addition to my field work in the West, I was employed by Redlodge Clearinghouse, a collaborative effort in the West that brings diverse groups of stakeholders together. Participants create projects that involve “thinking out of the box” in order to find solutions on behalf of land and wildlife protection, and the well being of the human community.
I continue to expand my work here in Maine by creating this Educational Network for all Maine citizens, teachers, parents, children, farmers, our legislators, and political leaders in order that Maine will stand out in the Nation as a leader in the protection of a rich biodiversity, but also as an example of the mutual respect we have for each other’s diverse perspectives as we work together “for the Way Life should be”. Geri Vistein
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