In 1959 Peter Matthiessen published the first history of wildlife in
North America. By the time his book, Wildlife in America, appeared in
print, humans and wild animals had lived together on the continent for
more than 13,000 years. About 150 native species had gone extinct,
and hundreds of exotic species had colonized the landscape. Wild
animals had served as food, clothing, shelter, servants, companions,
weapons, and totems. A few charismatic species—such as the timber
wolf, bald eagle, and American bison—had even attained the status of
national icons. Today’s wildlife symbols include a peculiar
menagerie: California condors, spotted owls, desert tortoises, polar
bears, delta smelts, and Delhi Sands flower-loving flies, to name just
a few. As we will see in this class, their stories have much to tell
us not only about ecological science and environmental politics, but
also about American history and culture.

This course will explore the turbulent, contested, and colorful
history of wildlife in North America. It will span from the
Pleistocene to the present, and it will cover the entire continent.
Throughout the term we will return to examples from California—the
U.S. state with the greatest biological diversity, largest human
population, and richest conservation history. The goal of this course
will be for you, the students, to develop a sophisticated
understanding of the changing relationships between people and wild
animals over time. There are no easy answers for why things happened
the way they did, and no simple lessons for what we should do in the
future. But it’s a good story, and one that offers myriad, often
unexpected, insights for serious students of history and environmental
studies.