The USA is home to creatures both great and small, from the ferocious grizzly to the industrious beaver, with colossal bison, snowy owls, soaring eagles, howling coyotes and doe-eyed manatees all part of the great American menagerie. The nation’s varied geography – coastlines along two oceans, mountains, deserts, rainforests, and massive bay and river systems – harbor ecosystems where an extraordinary array of plant and animal life can flourish.
The USA is big, no question. Covering nearly 3.8 million sq miles, it’s the world’s third-largest country, trailing only Russia and Canada, its friendly neighbor to the north. The continental USA is made up of 48 contiguous states (‘the lower 48’), while Alaska, its largest state, is northwest of Canada, and the volcanic islands of Hawaii, the 50th state, are 2300 miles southwest of the mainland in the Pacific Ocean.
It’s more than just size, though. America feels big because of its incredibly diverse topography, which began to take shape around 50 to 60 million years ago.
In the contiguous USA, the east is a land of temperate, deciduous forests and contains the ancient Appalachian Mountains, a low range that parallels the Atlantic Ocean. Between the Appalachians and the coast lies the country’s most populated, urbanized region, particularly in the corridor between Washington, DC, and Boston, MA.
To the north are the Great Lakes, which the USA shares with Canada. These five lakes are the greatest expanse of fresh water on the planet, constituting nearly 20% of the world’s supply.
Going south along the East Coast, things get wetter and warmer till you reach the swamps of southern Florida and make the turn into the Gulf of Mexico, which provides the USA with its southern coastline.
West of the Appalachians are the vast interior plains, which lie flat all the way to the Rocky Mountains. The eastern plains are the nation’s breadbasket, roughly divided into the northern ‘corn belt’ and the southern ‘cotton belt.’ The plains, an ancient sea bottom, are drained by the mighty Mississippi River, which together with the Missouri River forms the world’s fourth-longest river system, surpassed only by the Nile, Amazon and Yangtze Rivers. Going west, farmland slowly gives way to cowboys and ranches in the semiarid, big-sky Great Plains.
The young, jagged Rocky Mountains are a complex set of tall ranges that run all the way from Mexico to Canada, providing excellent skiing. West of these mountains are the Southwestern deserts, an arid region of extremes that has been cut to dramatic effect by the Colorado River system. This land of eroded canyons leads to the unforgiving Great Basin as you go across Nevada. Also an ancient sea bottom, the Great Basin is used as a training ground and a test range by the US military. It’s also where the USA plans to bury its nuclear waste.
Then you reach America’s third major mountain system: the southern, granite Sierra Nevada and the northern, volcanic Cascades, which both parallel the Pacific Coast. California’s Central Valley is one of the most fertile places on earth, while the coastline from San Diego to Seattle is celebrated in folk songs and Native American legends – a stretch of sandy beaches and old-growth forests, including coast redwoods.
But wait, there’s more. Northwest of Canada, Alaska reaches the Arctic Ocean and contains tundra, glaciers, an interior rainforest and the lion’s share of federally protected wilderness. Hawaii, in the Pacific Ocean, is a string of tropical island idylls.
Nineteenth-century Americans did not willingly suffer competing predators, and federal eradication programs nearly wiped out every single wolf and big cat and many of the bears in the continental US. Almost all share the same story of abundance, precipitous loss and, today, partial recovery.
The grizzly bear, a subspecies of brown bear, is one of North America’s largest land mammals. Male grizzlies can stand 7ft tall, weigh up to 850lb and consider 500 sq miles home. At one time, as many as 100,000 grizzlies roamed the West, but by 1975 fewer than 1000 remained. Conservation efforts, particularly in the Greater Yellowstone Region, have increased the population in the lower 48 states to about 1500 today. By contrast, Alaska remains chock-full of grizzlies, with upwards of 30,000. Despite a decline in numbers, black bears survive nearly everywhere. Smaller than grizzlies, these opportunistic, adaptable and curious animals can survive on very small home ranges.
Another extremely adaptable creature is the coyote, which looks similar to a wolf but is about half the size, ranging from 15lb to 45lb. An icon of the Southwest, coyotes are found all over, even in cities. The USA has one primary big-cat species, which goes by several names: mountain lion, cougar, puma and panther. In the east, a remnant population of panthers is found within Everglades National Park. In the West, mountain lions are common enough for human encounters to be on the increase. These powerful cats are about 150lb of pure muscle, with short, tawny fur and long tails.
The story of the great American buffalo (or bison) is a tragic one. These massive herbivores numbered as many as 65 million in 1800 – in herds so thick they ‘darkened the whole plains,’ as explorers Lewis and Clark wrote. They were killed for food, hides, sport and to impoverish Native Americans, who depended on them for survival. By the 20th century, only a few hundred bison remained. Overcoming near extinction, new herds arose from these last survivors, so that one of America’s noblest animals can again be admired in its gruff majesty – among other places, in Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Badlands National Parks.
The wolf is a potent symbol of America’s wilderness. This smart, social predator is the largest species of canine – averaging more than 100lb and reaching nearly 3ft at the shoulder. An estimated 400,000 once roamed the continent from coast to coast, from Alaska to Mexico.
Wolves were not regarded warmly by European settlers. The first wildlife legislation in the British colonies was a wolf bounty. As 19th-century Americans tamed the West, they slaughtered the once-uncountable herds of bison, elk, deer and moose, replacing them with domestic cattle and sheep, which wolves found equally tasty.
To stop wolves from devouring the livestock, the wolf’s extermination soon became official government policy. Up until 1965, for $20 to $50 an animal, wolves were shot, poisoned, trapped and dragged from dens until in the lower 48 states only a few hundred gray wolves remained in northern Minnesota and Michigan.
In 1944 naturalist Aldo Leopold called for the return of the wolf. His argument was ecology, not nostalgia. His studies showed that wild ecosystems need their top predators to maintain a healthy biodiversity; in complex interdependence, all animals and plants suffered with the wolf gone.
Despite dire predictions from ranchers and hunters, gray wolves were reintroduced to the Greater Yellowstone region in 1995–96 and Mexican wolves to Arizona in 1998.
Protected and encouraged, wolf populations have made a remarkable recovery, with more than 6000 now counted in the continental US, and around 8000 in Alaska. In 2019, the US Fish & Wildlife Service proposed removing the gray wolf from the endangered species list; a decision is pending.
Perhaps no native fish gets more attention than salmon, whose spawning runs up Pacific Coast rivers provide famous spectacles. However, both Pacific and Atlantic salmon are considered endangered; hatcheries release millions of young every year, but there is debate about whether this practice hurts or helps wild populations.
As for marine life, gray, humpback and blue whales migrate annually along the Pacific Coast, making whale-watching very popular. Alaska and Hawaii are important breeding grounds for whales and marine mammals, and Washington’s San Juan Islands are visited by orcas. The Pacific Coast is also home to ponderous elephant seals, playful sea lions and endangered sea otters.
In California, Channel Islands National Park and Monterey Bay preserve unique, highly diverse marine worlds. For coral reefs and tropical fish, Hawaii and the Florida Keys are the prime destinations. The coast of Florida is also home to the unusual, gentle manatee, which moves between freshwater rivers and the ocean. Around 10ft long and weighing on average 1000lb, these agile, expressive creatures number around 6500 today, and may once have been mistaken for mermaids.
The Gulf of Mexico is another vital marine habitat, perhaps most famously for endangered sea turtles, which nest on coastal beaches.
Earthquakes, wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes and blizzards – the US certainly has its share of natural disasters. Just a few of the more infamous events that have shaped the national consciousness:
Johnstown Flood In 1889 torrential rains overwhelmed the South Fork dam that stood high on the Little Conemaugh River in Central Pennsylvania. When the dam broke, some 20 million tons of water and debris quickly inundated nearby Johnstown, killing over 2200 people and destroying 1600 homes.
Galveston Hurricane In 1900 Galveston – then known as ‘the jewel of Texas’ – was practically obliterated by a category-4 hurricane. Fifteen-foot waves destroyed buildings and at one point the entire island was submerged. More than 8000 perished, making it America’s deadliest natural disaster.
1906 San Francisco Earthquake A powerful earthquake (estimated to be around an 8 on the Richter scale) leveled the city, followed by even more devastating fires. The quake was felt as far away as Oregon and Central Nevada. An estimated 3000-plus died, while more than 200,000 people (of a population of 410,000) were left homeless.
Dust Bowl During a prolonged drought of the 1930s, the overworked topsoil of the Great Plains dried up, turned to dust and billowed eastward in massive windstorm-fueled ‘black blizzards,’ reaching all the way to NYC and Washington, DC. Millions of acres of crops were destroyed and more than 500,000 people were left homeless. The great exodus westward by stricken farmers and migrants was immortalized in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.
Hurricane Katrina August 29, 2005, is not a day easily forgotten in New Orleans. A massive category-5 hurricane swept across the Gulf of Mexico and slammed into Louisiana. As levees failed, floods inundated more than 80% of the city. The death toll reached 1836, with more than $100 billion in estimated damages.
Hurricane Sandy In 2012 this hurricane affected some 24 states, with New Jersey and New York among the hardest hit. More than 100 died in the USA, and estimated damages amounted to more than $65 billion. It was also the largest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded, with storm winds spanning over 1100 miles.
Hurricane Irma On September 10, 2017, one of the largest hurricanes ever recorded barreled over Florida, causing flooding and destruction. Hurricane Irma made landfall in the Florida Keys as a category 4 storm the width of Texas. Homes and businesses in Everglades City were left battered and mud-soaked after an 8ft storm surge; in the Keys, a Federal Emergency Management Agency survey reported that 25% of buildings had been destroyed, with another 65% damaged.
Birding is the most popular wildlife-watching activity in the US, and little wonder – all the hemisphere’s migratory songbirds and shorebirds rest here at some point, and the USA consequently claims some 800 native avian species.
The bald eagle was adopted as the nation’s symbol in 1782. It’s the only eagle unique to North America, and perhaps half a million once ruled the continent’s skies. By 1963, habitat destruction and, in particular, poisoning from DDT had caused the population to plummet to 487 breeding pairs in the lower 48 states. By 2007, however, bald eagles had recovered so well, increasing to almost 9800 breeding pairs across the continent (plus 30,000 in Alaska), that they were removed from the endangered species list.
Another impressive bird is the endangered California condor, a prehistoric, carrion-eating bird that weighs about 20lb and has a wingspan of over 9ft. Condors were virtually extinct by the 1980s (reduced to just 22 birds), but they have been successfully bred and reintroduced in California and northern Arizona, where they can sometimes be spotted soaring above the Grand Canyon.
The USA is well known for its political and social revolutions, but it also birthed modern environmentalism. The USA was the first nation to make significant efforts to preserve its wilderness, and US environmentalists often spearhead preservation efforts worldwide.
America’s Protestant settlers believed that civilization’s Christian mandate was to bend nature to its will. Not only was wilderness deadly and difficult, it was also a potent symbol of humanity’s godless impulses, and the Pilgrims set about subduing both with gusto.
Then, in the mid-19th century, taking their cue from European Romantics, the USA’s transcendentalists claimed that nature was not fallen, but holy. In Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854), iconoclast Henry David Thoreau described living for two years in the woods, blissfully free of civilization’s comforts. He persuasively argued that human society was harmfully distant from nature’s essential truths. This view marked a profound shift toward believing that nature, the soul and God were one.
The continent’s natural wonders – vividly captured by America’s 19th-century landscape painters – had a way of selling themselves, and rampant nationalism led to a desire to promote them. In the late 1800s, US presidents began setting aside land for state and national parks.
Scottish naturalist John Muir soon emerged to champion wilderness for its own sake. Muir considered nature superior to civilization, and he spent much of his life wandering the Sierra Nevada mountain range and passionately advocating on its behalf. Muir was the driving force behind the USA’s emerging conservation movement, which had its first big victory in 1890 when Yosemite National Park was established. Muir founded the Sierra Club in 1892 and slowly gained national attention.
Currently, more than 1650 plants and animals are listed in the USA as either endangered or threatened. Although all endangered species are vital to the ecosystem, if it’s brag-worthy animals that you’re keen to see (and photograph), here are the places to spot them before it’s too late:
California condor Big Sur, CA, and Grand Canyon National Park, AZ
Desert tortoise Mojave National Preserve, CA
Florida panther Everglades National Park, FL
Hawaiian goose Haleakalā National Park, HI
Manatee Everglades National Park, FL
Mexican long-nosed bat Big Bend National Park, TX
Whooping cranes Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, TX, and Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, NM
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the USA passed a series of landmark environmental and wildlife laws that resulted in significant improvements in the nation’s water and air quality, and the partial recovery of many near-extinct plants and animals. The movement’s focus steadily broadened – to preserving entire ecosystems, not just establishing parks – as it confronted devastation wrought by pollution, overkill of species, habitat destruction through human impact and the introduction of nonnative species.
Today environmentalism is a worldwide movement, one that understands that each nation’s local problems also contribute to a global threat: climate change. In the USA, the dangers of global warming are inspiring an environmental awareness as widespread as at any time in US history. Whether or not average Americans believe God speaks through nature, they’re increasingly disturbed by the messages they are hearing.