Animals and wildlife were very helpful to them. The buffalo was a great source of food for the native Americans and the pioneers and homesteaders. Deer and other game animals fed and kept clothes on their backs. Plants were used to make medicine and some roots were used to make tea.
Wildlife was the main way of life on the plains. If there was no animals to hunt, fish to catch, or crops to harvest they starved to death. More and better information could be found in a good book.
Western Mass Pioneers was created in 1998.
One way that wildlife could be dangerous to the pioneers that traveled west was by attacking the pioneers. They could also be attracted to their food and take it.
rabbits
They could keep warm in the heat or scavenge ant hunt for food and animal pelts.
The pioneers opened up the hinterlands and west of the continent of North America and effectively settled the territories that later formed the western and mid western states. In doing this they also treated the preexisting inhabitants very badly committing genocide and wiping out vast numbers of the native wildlife (eg the buffalo). On balance perhaps they are not to be proud of.
to keep them warm
The question includes the answer. The pioneers were expanding and settling westward
Life on Fire Wildlife on the Volcano's Edge - 2013 Pioneers of the Deep 1-6 was released on: USA: February 2013
because they could go to the bathroom behind a tree
They only hoped they would never see the elephant.
squirrels.
There is plenty of wildlife in western europe. There are, for example, well over a thousand kinds of mosses and liverworts in europe.