‘Iconic wildlife’ can be found only in certain, distinctive lifescapes

Words matter because they allow us to share the awe, the joy and the wonder of Life. So, when speaking of “iconic wildlife” we must begin by establishing common ground regarding what those two words mean.

Different dictionaries define them differently, but those differences can be overcome. I prefer the American Heritage Dictionary, which I cite here.

An icon is “an image, a representation, an important enduring symbol, the object of great attention…”

Wild means “occurring, growing, or living in a natural state; not domesticated, cultivated or tamed…”

The definition of life extends to a much longer and more diverse treatment but the definition cited as biological meets the need: “The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter…”

Combing the two words into “wildlife” gives, “Wild animals and vegetation, especially animals living in a natural undomesticated state.”

From the closing decades of the 1800s into the closing decades of the 1900s, people used the word “wildlife” to specifically mean game animals, which meant animals that could be legally hunted or trapped. However, the reference included only birds and mammals.

Thus, a university had a Department of Fish and Wildlife Biology; and the U.S. Department of the Interior had — and still has — the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

As the recreation of birding — the deliberate pursuit of finding birds to identify them — gained popularity, nature enthusiasts extended the recreation concept to butterflies and dragonflies, to amphibians and reptiles, even to trees and wildflowers and whales.

Thus emerged the present-day concepts of “watchable wildlife” and “ecotourism.”

The era of using the word “wildlife” to mean a species of animal that you are legally allowed to kill has ended.

If it is alive and lives wild, it is wildlife.

From this more inclusive definition we can now comprehend iconic wildlife. Every species of wildlife — alga, bacterium, animal, fungus, plant — connects with place. All those connections taken collectively both visibly and functionally determine the character of place.

Some wildlife species adapt well to diverse lifescapes, but other wildlife species have specific needs that allow them to exist in only certain lifescapes. Thus, you can find an American crow and a coyote almost anywhere; but you can find a whitetailed ptarmigan and a pika in only a few ecologically distinctive places.

That connectivity of Life to place distinguishes common wildlife from iconic wildlife.