Four hundred years ago this week (or thereabouts) Henry Hudson first arrived in these parts, signaling the start of European settlement. What did he see? The ecologist Eric W. Sanderson has been working for several years to reconstruct what the island of Manhattan looked like at this time. I learned from an article in yesterday's Times that he has a book forthcoming, and an exhibition at the New-York Historical Society on "The Natural History of NYC" is coming, too. Apparently the island wasn't just greener, but acre for acre "had more ecological diversity than Yellowstone, more native plant species than Yosemite, more species of birds than the Great Smoky Mountains. ... If Mannahatta existed today as it did then, it would be a national park... It would be the crowning glory of American national parks.” (Of course, acre for acre is how a small place would want to be compared to the heavyweights!)Sanderson's work is described also in The World Without Us, and the striking image above - unfortunately only in b&w - appears there too.
