> ...until you ask that question, it (the Pre-Contact continent)
> remains the unspoken goal behind statements that include
> the words "bad for the environment", and that unspoken
> goal stymies fruitful discussion.
> Once that question is asked, you can have a conversation
> about what landscape we want going forward. Probably
> one with development, no persistent insecticide spraying,
> and lots of forage worked into landscaping and plantings.
But even the question of what that "pre-contact" landscape looked like is very much still up in the air. Case in point. The Native Americans did not use controlled burns to "manage" forest and prairie. We've been told this myth since I was a kid.
https://theconversation.com/native-people-did-not-use-fire-to-shape-new-englands-landscape-129429
https://tinyurl.com/y2z3gyc4
But the Bison, in large numbers WERE unintentional "land managers":
https://www.startribune.com/are-bison-the-key-to-bringing-back-minnesota-prairies/572337262/
https://tinyurl.com/yxrk5sgo
And the romantic literature of "the wilderness" and "the frontier" was written by men who never saw any of it. James Fennimore Cooper, whose "The Oak Openings - The Bee Hunter" (1848) is required reading for any beekeeper, is a good example. He lived in Westchester County, NY, just north of NYC, then in NYC, in Europe, then back to NYC, and then Cooperstown, NY. He had ZERO first-hand experience of anything he wrote about, despite being a good writer, and the the primary influence over why I have planned my life around ice climbing, rock climbing, mountain hiking, solo-circumnavigation (twice!), and other things one can see on ESPN 7 at 3am, along with travels to the more obscure places where altitudes are high, the air is a bit thin, and "running water" is a stream or a dream.
So the basic perception of a "native" environment is most certainly wrong unless we retire Smokey the Bear and all the smoke-jumpers, and breed a few million more Bison to roam at will between Chicago and the foothills of the Rockies. And they ain't gonna do that, so they can STFU about bees, thank you very much.
Don't get me started, I might go off on a rant. ;)
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