Killing butterflies

[Kenelm Philip]

	With regard to the 'Red Man's way':

	It now appears there is a good case to be made for the idea that
human migration into North America was responsible for the almost total
destruction of the Pleistocene megafauna. Furthermore, the book 'The Future
Eaters' by Tim Flannery describes how the Australian aborigines (usually
held as the epitome of 'live lightly on the land') were probably respon-
sible not only for the extinction of the Australian megafauna, but also
for actually changing the climate of the continent toward its present
arid condition--an accomplishment that industrialized Western humans have
not quite yet matched, although the Romans did a good job with North
Africa.

	Amerindians did indeed affect the landscape in many ways--primarily
by extensive burning of forest lands. The dense forest that the pioneers
had to clear grew up _after_ the Indians had been reduced by disease to
a fraction of their former population, and their land-management methods
were no longer being applied on such a large scale.

	There is also evidence that wildlife in the western U.S. was at
much higher densities in the no-man's-lands between tribes than they were
within the traditional hunting grounds of any given tribe.

	These matters are not as simple as they may appear at first...

							Ken Philip
fnkwp at uaf.edu