Spring 2015
Author(s): 
Shane Mahoney

The sad and often perverse slaughter of wildlife that marked the European colonization of North America, remains one of the great examples of how selfish purpose has the capacity to improverish both nature and society. Fortunatly, the great innovation we term conservation was itself an outcome of this unfettered onslaught and exemplifies, how the spur of crisis can raise both a nation's conscience and its resolve to progress. Indeed, the fading thunder of the once innumberable bison still echos in our consciousness. It persists as a shawdowed reality that settles upon our own debates surrounding the future of wildlife on this continent today. So too do the images of denuded hillsides and debris choked streams, places of timeless abundance and beauty rendered silent, broken and improverished within a few blind and vorcious generations.