States of Nature: Conserving Canada's Wildlife in the Twentieth Century

If Canadian conservationists had had their way at the turn of the twentieth century, their country would have been the place Americans looked to when they sang yearningly of a home where the buffalo roamed. With the proper measures, Canada could have been a haven for North America's wild animals, a place where remnant populations devastated by settlement and development would recover and flourish. The country's treatment of wildlife became a way for some Canadians to distinguish themselves from their southern neighbors. For others, it embodied a different kind of ecological consciousness, one that reconciled human needs with those of wildlife. For them, Canada could be home to people as well as a place where wild things lived and played. States of Nature is the first book to tell the story of efforts to save Canada's wildlife, looking at the changing substance, aims, and impacts of the conservation initiatives undertaken by government as well as private organizations and individuals during the twentieth century, before the emergence of the modern environmental movement.