Book excerpt: In what is now western Canada, humans have long used wildlife in order to survive their surroundings, better understand their natural world, and form aspects of their identity. This book identifies the imaginative use of wild animals in early western society to explore a previously neglected avenue of social history. By examining grassroots conservation activities, early slaughter rituals, iconographic traditions, and subsistence strategies, Colpitts clearly demonstrates how western attitudes to wild animals changed according to subsistence and economic needs - through the fur trade, game and sport hunting, and farming - and how wildlife helped to shape the social relationships of people in western Canada. It is a thought-provoking work that will appeal to environmental historians, Native studies specialists, conservationists, and nature enthusiasts.