Sterba - Nature wars: the incredible story of how wildlife comebacks turned backyards into battlegrounds

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Copyright 2012 by Jim Sterba

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Portions of this book appeared in different form in the Wall Street Journal and are used here with permission.

Excerpts from Reel Nature by Gregg Mitman are used with permission of the author, who holds the copyright.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sterba, Jim, 1943
Nature wars : the incredible story of how wildlife comebacks turned backyards into battlegrounds / Jim Sterba.1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. NatureEffect of human beings onUnited States. 2. Nature conservationSocial aspectsUnited States. 3. Wildlife conservationSocial aspectsUnited States. 4. Wildlife rehabilitationSocial aspectsUnited States. 5. United StatesEnvironmental conditions. I. Title.
GF503.S74 2011
304.20973dc23

2012000296

eISBN: 978-0-307-98566-8

Jacket design: Megan McLaughlin
Jacket photographs: istockphoto/Paul Tessier (deer), JFB/Getty Images (businessmen), Sascha Pflaeging/Getty Images (background)

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For Frances

Wild turkeys roost in pines on the hill beside the house. Blue herons stalk the pond, stabbing at frogs and bass. Painted turtles sun themselves on floating barley bales. Ducks and geese fly in and out. Red-tailed hawks soar above. Crows are constant visitors. Vultures circle. Songbirds abound. Raccoons, red foxes, and opossums stop by. Spring skunks make their presence known. Plenty of woodchucks, rabbits, gray squirrels, and chipmunks share our little plot. Great horned owls keep us awake. Woodpeckers pound holes in the house siding. Beavers, muskrats, and bog turtles ply the marsh out back, and coyotes howl at dusk behind it. Weve seen river otters, a fisher, and a long-tailed weasel. Bobcat sightings are credible, feral pigs are headed our way, a moose ambled to within a couple of miles as the crow flies. Last spring, a bear devoured our neighbors birdseed, and a mountain lion turned up one state over.

My wife and I live, on weekends, in the northeast corner of Dutchess County, New York, on the edge of the countrys largest metropolitan region. We rent a guest cottage on the remains of a 180-acre dairy farm that is a patchwork of meadows, marsh, and forest. That we share it with such a wild menagerie, just two hours north of New York City, is a source of some amazement, especially to people who live elsewhere.

Deer are everywhere. They have eaten out much of what grows on the forest floor. They graze in the field behind the house, sometimes in daylight. They snack in our yard and have salted it with ticks (Ive had Lyme disease three times in eleven years). Turkeys are becoming less wild around us. They flock in the daytime beside busy roads, sometimes roaming in gangs through newly sown fields, pecking seed grain from the soil and causing farmers fits. Canada geese more than a thousand strong live more or less permanently within a radius of three miles from us, eating and defecating, eating and defecating. Their droppings are fouling local lakes and ponds, turning golf courses into obstacle courses, and rendering parks and athletic fields at times unusable.