Andrew Moore: "The Beasts of the East"

Before skyscrapers and smokestacks rose across the eastern U.S., elk, bison, wolves, and cougars roamed. Typically imagined as icons of the West, these large mammals are in fact native to what was once a kind of Eden—towering forests in the Northeast, rolling prairies in the Midwest, and cypress swamps in the Deep South. But, in mere decades, industrialization and unregulated hunting brought these emblems of the East to the precipice of extinction; by the 1950s, squirrels were one of the few wild mammals an easterner was likely to encounter.

Now, even as the climate and biodiversity crises loom, eastern wildlife are staging an unlikely comeback. Herds of bison graze on Illinois prairies, red wolves lurk in North Carolina’s coastal marshes, and abandoned coal mines in Kentucky are now home to thousands of elk. Such rewilding promises to restore balance to eastern ecosystems and return one of the most biodiverse regions in the world to its former luster—but not without controversy.

In The Beasts of the East, we follow environmental writer and James Beard Award finalist Andrew Moore as he meets conservationists, hunters, biologists, and nature lovers as they confront herculean challenges: How can we enable wildlife migration in the midst of suburban sprawl? Are these success stories viable in the long-term? When humans and wildlife come in close contact, how do we define wilderness?

Andrew Moore will be joined in conversation by WYPR's Senior News Analyst Tom Hall.

About the Author:

Andrew Moore is the author of Pawpaw: In Search of America’s Forgotten Fruit, which was a James Beard Foundation Award nominee in Writing & Literature. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and The Daily Yonder. He lives in Pittsburgh.

About the Moderator:

Tom Hall is WYPR's Senior News Analyst. He was the host of Midday, the award-winning, highly rated news and public policy program on WYPR Radio that featured interviews with elected officials, community leaders, as well as thought provoking authors, artists, researchers, journalists and scholars from around the world.

About the Program:

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