“By mid-1990s, Michigan’s whitetail population had exploded in the southern third of the state, where millions of acres of cleared cropland had gone out of production, grown up with trees, and been converted to deer friendly sprawl.”(104)

Sterba spends a major portion of this book discussing the species such as the whitetail deer and beaver that have returned as farmland becomes forest. What he does not address is that certain species such as the deer have thrived because they are tolerant of living on the edge of human development in these fragmented forests. As we have learned in my conservation biology class, most species are unlike the deer and do not do well in fragmented forests that come in contact with humans. These edge sensitive species are not likely to do well in any of these regrowth forests surrounded by humans and the ecosystems will not have much biodiversity, simply the few species that thrive on the edge.

“As people left the land, pines and birches and blackberries crowded into the neglected pastures and forests sprang up in old corn fields. Many of the homes, barns, schoolhouses, and wooden fences collapsed, leaving only their more durable remnants in woods that are now crisscrossed with trails descended from an abandoned network of rural roads” (44)

Extremely powerful imagery.

“Although the environmental damage was great, the words environment and ecology were not familiar at the time and weren’t a big concern. Far more important was the scary idea that the population might run out of trees”(31)

“Hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts and wilde men” (19)

It is very interesting seeing how the collective mindset has shifted and changed over time.