ABSTRACT
Before European exploration and colonization in America almost four hundred years ago, a tremendously diverse wildlife lived on a correspondingly diverse land and in its forests. According to one scholar, since colonization, “At least 500 species have become extinct: an average of one or two per year. During the Pleistocene period (a period of glaciation, more than 10,000 years ago, when many natural extinctions occurred), fewer than 100 species were known to have been destroyed in North America.” 1 Although nearly one-third of the United States is forest land today, much of the wooded landscape is a homogeneous second and third growth. The old-growth forest, commonplace before the opening of the frontier in the seventeenth century, is largely gone, and with it the habitat for much wildlife.
