Chapter 6

The first quote by Scott Weidensaul in Chapter 6 that stood out to me was “This once the most widespread game animal in North America, from western Vermont and Massachusetts down through New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and in the mountains of Georgia, then west across the Plains to the Pacific.”. This sentence stood out to me because when I lived in Massachusetts we would go hiking a lot and one of the animals we would see was an elk. Every year they would get harder to find. It’s interesting to me that they used to be the most abundant game animal, I always thought that was deer.

http://nps.gov/features/yell/slidefile/mammals/elk/page.htm

The second quote of Weidensauls I liked was “The last wolf in the Pennsylvania Appalachians was probably shot in 1892 in Clearfield County, a little south where I now sit in the spring time sun, although some people claim that the species grimly hung on until 1902, just nudging under the wire of the twentieth century before being snuffed out.”. This sentence caught my eye because I knew nothing about how wolves became endangered or how certain species are extinct. I know that there are wolf sanctuaries in Florida but I did not know that they were widely hunted in the Appalachian Mountains. I always thought that the hunters only cared about deer and game birds. Wolves are very intelligent creatures and it is sad to think about how some have gone extinct because of humans hunting them.

http://king-animal.blogspot.com/2012/07/wolf.html

The last sentence that stood out to me the most was “While the mushrooming tract housing cannot ultimately be good for them, many bears have adapted to their new neighbors, perhaps sensing the opportunities that human provide.”  This statement by Weidensaul is so true to me. I think that if humans are invading bear’s space by putting in houses the bears are obviously going to take advantage of what’s now in the area. I think it’s amazing that bears are so adaptable that this boom didn’t wipe them out. People think that bears are dangerous nuisance but they are just misunderstood. In my opinion they’re like giant dogs, if you leave food out they are going to come and find it and if you scare them, they’re going to defend themselves. The way bears are judged is truly saddening because bears are my favorite animal and they are treated so poorly.

http://bearlegend.com/bear-facts/grizzly-bear/





Weidensaul, S. (2016). Mountains of the Heart: A Natural History of the Appalachians. Golden: Fulcrum Publishing.