I am attempting to reconstruct what is known about the abundance of raccoons before widespread European land changes in North America. I am looking for things like naturalists’ observations, archeological sites, furbearer records, etc. I wouldn’t normally ask the community for help with a literature search, but I am concerned that this involves a lot of sources that are not very accessible. I have made some good progress already, but if anyone has any other clever ideas I would love to hear them. ****
One approach I am pursuing is to try to estimate distributions of the major pre-European North American terrestrial habitats and rank these in term of their potential as raccoon habitat. I am sure that someone has made built such a map, can you direct me to one? Thank you. Colleen Sorbera, Hofstra University
