America’s Greenest President

Wednesday, May 9th, 2018

Follow this link to watch Judi Geer’s presentation on YouTube.

Last month, the TR Site had the pleasure of welcoming retired librarian and professor Judi Geer to its ongoing Speaker Nite series. Her talk, “Theodore Roosevelt: America’s Greenest President,” was based on the book The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America by Douglas Brinkley, and focused on Roosevelt’s contributions to the preservation and protection of America’s most precious topography.

Geer began her talk by discussing the results of a 2012 survey conducted by Corporate Knights, a media and financial services company that promotes “clean capitalism.” They asked 12 of the leading environmental groups to submit and rank the names of the top 3 U.S. Presidents they felt had done the most to preserve and protect the American environment. Their selections were then given point values based on their rank; only 8 of the 44 presidents in the survey were even mentioned, with fewer still receiving more than only a few points each. There was however, a clear winner. With more total points than the second and third choices combined, one man stood out as a shining beacon of environmental enlightenment, and that man was Theodore Roosevelt.

To further illustrate Roosevelt’s unrivaled commitment to America’s topography, flora, and fauna, Geer referenced a specific example from Brinkley’s book. Brinkley described a March 1903 meeting TR had with noted ornithologists Frank Chapman and William Dutcher. Both men had been lobbying for years to create a bird sanctuary on Pelican Island, a federally-owned island off the east coast of Florida. The rocky island was home to thousands of exotic birds, many of which were being hunted for their colorful plumage as decoration for women’s hats by the millinery industry.

After listening attentively to Chapman’s and Dutcher’s description of Pelican Island’s quandary, "...and sickened by the update of the plumers’ slaughter for millinery ornaments, Roosevelt asked, 'Is there any law that will prevent me from declaring Pelican Island a Federal Bird Reservation?'  The answer was a decided 'No'; the island, after all, was federal property. 'Very well then,' Roosevelt said with marvelous quickness. 'I So Declare It.'” (Brinkley 2009, 14)

The alacrity with which Roosevelt announced ‘I So Declare It’, demonstrates how willing he was to break new ground in terms of environmental conservation, and how remarkably little convincing was required to spur him into action. The land set aside that day became the first unit of the present U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Refuge System and it was the first time in history that the U.S. government set aside land for such a purpose. This, however, was not the first time TR’s deep love of nature compelled him into action and it would not be the last occasion in which he used his executive powers to intervene on behalf of environmental conservation.

On the surface, Theodore Roosevelt may not have seemed like the most likely candidate to be a wilderness warrior. He was a man of wealth and privilege and a lifelong hunter. Yet, everything about his early life and upbringing instilled in him a lifelong love and appreciation of nature. His philanthropic father was a primary founder of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. His uncle Robert Barnwell Roosevelt was a noted naturalist and conservationist who published the seminal work Game Fish of the Northern States and British Provinces in 1862. Additionally, Robert Barnwell was known for the menagerie of animals he kept in his New York City home--a habit that would later be adopted by TR and his children in the White House. The combined influence of the two formidable men instilled in Theodore the importance of the study and protection of nature. Although, little Theodore did not require much convincing. As a child he showed an enormous interest in nature, playing with the animals at his uncle’s home, drawing pictures of wildlife, and collecting specimens from all the different countries his family traveled to. He even took up taxidermy as a hobby--something his mother wasn’t quite as excited about. As he began his studies at Harvard University, Theodore studied Natural Sciences with the intention of pursuing science as a career. His rooms at Harvard were full of insects, specimens, and hunting trophies. He was even Vice President of the Harvard Natural History Society. Though he ultimately graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in History and Government, he remained highly interested in the natural sciences.

Roosevelt’s exuberance and enthusiasm could not be contained within an exacting and rigorous laboratory setting and instead abandoned life in academia for a career in politics. While serving as a New York State Assemblyman, personal tragedy struck and TR abruptly left his life in New York to go west to the Badlands of North Dakota. His time there furthered his understanding of America’s natural heritage and the raw beauty of the west. Though his time there was relatively short, it had a lasting impact. After stints as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, NYS Governor, and Vice President, on September 14th 1901 Theodore Roosevelt became the 26th President of the United States. Shortly thereafter, he made it clear that he would fight to protect America’s heritage, specifically the wild areas out west that he had become so familiar with.

At this point, Geer had to concede that listing all of Roosevelt’s conservation activity as president would take far too long, so instead she focused on one of his most significant and lasting achievements: the American Antiquities Act of 1906. The act was designed to allow the president and the U.S. government to designate sights of historical, geological, or environmental importance. Section two gave specific powers to the president stating, “The President of the United States is hereby authorized, in his discretion, to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be national monuments…” Quite unsurprisingly, TR took full advantage of his new powers and stretched them to their absolute limit. The last two and a half years of his presidency he used the Antiquities Act repeatedly. Most notably, he set aside 800,000 acres in Arizona as the Grand Canyon National Monument, which may have overstepped the original intention of the Antiquities Act…slightly (the law was only meant to cover the preservation of 5,000 acres). TR created more national monuments in the two years he was able to use the Antiquities Act than any president created during their full term of office.

Roosevelt’s conservation activities were not limited to his time in office and Geer chose to end her talk with a story about another one of TR’s lasting impacts. At the turn of the previous century, the population of American bison, more colloquially known as buffalo, was facing extinction. The west, which was once home to millions of bison, contained only about 1,100. In recognition of this crisis Theodore Roosevelt sought to establish a bison breeding program at the Bronx Zoo, where he was a founding member in 1894. By 1907, that breeding program had become so successful that 15 bison were sent by specialized luxury railroad boxcars to Wichita National Forest in Oklahoma to bolster the population. In 1913, 14 more bison were sent to South Dakota, and bison were eventually sent to Yellowstone to begin to repopulate the nearly extinct herds. The Bronx Zoo breeding program, devised by Theodore Roosevelt himself, saved the American bison from extinction and preserved one of the west’s most iconic animals.

Roosevelt’s involvement with the bison repopulation is just one of many examples of TR’s hands-on attitude toward environmental conservation. Geer’s talk highlighted only a few of the lasting contributions of a man for whom Arbor Day was as big a holiday as the 4th of July. The audience was left with a better understanding of why TR had topped the charts of that recently-conducted survey and why he is considered to be America’s greenest president.  

- Lindsey Lauren Visser, Public Programming Assistant

*****

Speaker Nite is part of the TR Site’s regular Tuesday evening programming, which is made possible with generous support from M&T Bank, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

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