In the first of the famous Leatherstocking Tales, a novel called The Pioneers, in the introduction the author mentions a regret about the arrival of the white man to the Otsego region of upstate New York:
Though forests still crown the mountains of Otsego, the bear, the wolf, and the panther are nearly strangers to them. Even the innocent deer is rarely seen bounding beneath their arches; for the rifle and the activity of the settlers hare driven them to other haunts. To this change (which in some particulars is melancholy to one who knew the country in its infancy), it may be added that the Otsego is beginning to be a niggard of its treasures.
From 1823!
I guess from the start some writers noticed what we did to this land.
Kit Stolz 