| What Is the Sasquatch? continued 3. The Sasquatch is not an endangered species in most of its range. On the mountainous western slope of the continent there are many hundreds of thousands of square miles of suitable habitat for it in which pressure from animals is minimal. In fact there is far more territory available for the Sasquatches than there is for the humans, and the volume of reports from every area where there are humans to do the reporting indicates that virtually all that territory is occupied. East of the mountains there is a wide area of level, open country that the Sasquatch apparently does not occupy, but there is nothing to suggest that it ever did. In the vast area drained by the Mississippi and its eastern tributaries as well as along the east coast there is presumably a great deal less forested area suitable for Sasquatches than was once the case, but there are plenty of reports to indicate an established population throught out the area. There is room for disagreement as to how many animals would be required to occupy all of that territory, but considering that the number of grizzly bears, which require large territories and occupy a much smaller area, is always estimated in multiples of ten thousand, the Sasquatch population must surely number at least in the thousands. It would appear that the "skunk apes" in Florida may be endangered by the destruction of their habitat to provide land for housing, and there may be other specific areas where populations of Sasquatches are threatened, but if man does threaten Sasquatches in any way it is obviously the land developer who is responsible, not the hunter. There ius no record of man ever successfully hunting a single one. |
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