The Northeast, especially Maine, has an exceptionally rich heritage of early literature about wildlife. These writings are buried in obscure scientific books and journals, government documents, rare books, old newspapers, and discontinued sporting periodicals. The primary section of this book is a chronologically-arranged compilation of selected quotations from these hard-to-find sources, thus making accessible significant wildlife writings of early biologists, naturalists, and woodsmen from northern New England and eastern Canada.

While designed to be a reference-work for biologists, conservationists, folklorists, and historians, this book will also be of use to campers, hunters, trappers, and others interested in the region’s natural history. Early Maine Wildlife features early writings about the Canada lynx, moose, mountain lion, white-tailed deer, wolverine, wolves, and woodland caribou. To put the historical information about these species into a contemporary context, life history summaries of these animals are presented. These brief life histories are supported with recent technical bibliographic references for those wanting more detailed scientific information.