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al capital continues. No part of North America has a longer history of European settlement than the Atlantic
coast, and this fact is reflected in the depleted forests and fish stocks and the number of species that are en-
dangered, threatened, or vulnerable—or extinct, as are the great auk, Labrador duck, and sea mink—as a result
of habitat alteration or destruction and wanton exploitation.
Human minds have known the Atlantic region intimately, and human hands have shaped it, as demonstrated
by the quilted pattern of grain and potato fields on Prince Edward Island, the “Garden of the Gulf,” where the
original Acadian forest has been all but lost. The first Europeans settled near the coast to be close to the bounty
of marine resources—whether fish, whales, oysters, crabs, waterfowl, seabirds, shorebirds, or salt hay.
Today, the northeast coast is the most densely populated region in the United States. More than three-quar-
ters of the residents of the northeast coastal states live in coastal counties, an estimated 54 million people from
Maine to the tidewaters of Virginia. The region also includes four of the nation's largest metropolitan
areas—New York, Washington, D.C.-Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston—cities, towns, and suburbs that
meld into a single megalopolis.
The crazy quilt pattern of fertile farm fields overspreads Prince Edward Island, the “Garden of the Gulf.”
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