I'm John Batchel with Professor Dan Flores.

Wild New World is his new book, The Epic Story of Animals and People, in America.

Thomas Jefferson, the Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark, and the opening of the West,

because much of the story up to now about the striking paradox between

the original Eurasian settlers and their sympathetic approach to the animal kingdom where they

thrived, and the second invasion of the Eurasian Homo sapiens, where they were either consternated or frightened by the animal kingdom.

Now we move to the west of the country.

And Lewis and Clark record the first shooting of a buffalo that's official in American life.

At the same time, this

period of revelations across America also include a man named John James Audubon, whom we remember

as the Audubon Society. So there are two approaches going on. One, how rich are we, and what can we do

with it? That would be the buffalo, the elk, and the wild animals of the West.

And the other, appreciate the bird life, the ornithology that is here right now.

Let's start with Audubon.

Dan, you make it very clear that he had to kill the birds that he painted

because they wouldn't hold still for him, of course.

Did he regret?

In his early life, you don't find many examples of regret.

I mean, what Audubon recognized was that in order to capture the vibrancy of the birds he was painting,

was that he had to have them close at hand.

He had to have them actually freshly killed.

And so he tended to wire them into lifelike poses and paint very rapidly.

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