Perhaps the only area of broad agreement is that bears symbolize the wild places that endure beyond the boundaries of human development. But in fact, the idea that America’s undeveloped places are a pristine wilderness—a faithful echo of the prehistoric era—is pure myth. We can preserve an individual butterfly by pinning its corpse to a corkboard, but as naturalists like Bernd Heinrich note, we can never pin down anything so complex and dynamic as an ecosystem.
