Click here to be joined by your audio host!

"Oh give me a home,
where the buffalo roam,
and the deer and the antelope play...."
- Home on the Range

At one time in the history of the United States, this "home" was called the Midwestern U.S. Before the expansion of the U.S., American buffalo, properly known as bison, roamed wild in herds in the Midwest. However, when the Western expansion movement began, people began killing them for various reasons. First it was for meat to eat on the journey westward, a justifiable reason. But with the advent of the locomotive, this food was not as necessary, since the trip could be made in shorter amounts of time. Instead, men used them as target practice and shot the bison from WITHIN THE MOVING TRAIN! This meant that once the bison was shot, it would be left there to rot, and was completely wasted. Because of this, the bison now survive only in small numbers in the U.S.

This was not just isolated to land. In the oceans of the North-Eastern U.S., whale used to populate the waters in abundance. They were killed for oil to cook, to heat homes, etc., a good reason since they were used in the colder areas of the U.S. However, because of population growth, more and more oil was needed. Because of this more and more whales were killed. Soon the whale was driven to the brink of extinction. Today their numbers are recovering, but they are still nowhere near the number they used to be before the hunting began.

Go back to The War on PlanetEarth