Then, now, and forever, TR will always be first. Through the creation of federal forests, parks, monuments, wildlife preserves, and other actions, he gave Americans the world’s greatest conservation system.
When Roosevelt came to office in 1901, the central force in government policy was still the “Great Bar-B-Q,” the policy of throwing the public lands open for unfettered development. There were stirrings of an environmental consciousness, such as the creation of Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks, but the enlightened Progressive Era was still in its infancy. It took a bold and foresighted president to ignite what amounted to nothing short of a revolution.
TR possessed a virtually undiluted power (probably not intended as such by the 1891 Congress) to create national forests out of the public domain. Presidents Harrison and Cleveland had used it previously, but Roosevelt took it to a whole new level by setting aside 150 million acres, about 7% of all land in the country, as forest preserves.
The policies and spirit of the Roosevelt Administration were on grand display in March 1907. The President, with the Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot at his side, had enraged western politicians the previous five years by unilaterally proclaiming more than a hundred national forests. Now Congress was about to bring him up short by shutting down his power under the once-minor 1891 provision. The House and Senate approved a measure that would block him from declaring new national forests in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, the states where the outcries were the loudest. Roosevelt’s opponents strategically embedded the measure in the general appropriations bill, which the President would have no choice but to approve.
But an event intervened. For some reason, the appropriations bill found its way to the bottom of TR’s “bills to sign” pile. This may have been related to the activities of the full, frenzied, and celebratory previous week, when Roosevelt, Pinchot, and his men laid out maps of western states on the floor and drew boundary lines around national forest candidates. The President himself had gotten down on his hands and knees to check out the topography.
So, when it came to signing time, before he could get to the appropriations bill at the bottom of the pile, he just happened to sign a raft of executive orders, 38 in all, creating still more national forests totaling no less than 16 million acres—one-quarter the size of Colorado. Only then did the president turn to approving the law that abrogated his authority in the six listed states. For TR, who so loved to inject drama—and joy—into the making of public policy, signing the “Midnight Reserves” was one of his most cherished moments. He laughed that his opponents “turned handsprings in their wrath.” “Oh,” he exulted, “this is bully!”
TR, who treasured birds ever since he was a boy, grieved at the extermination of the passenger pigeons and other species. He knew many more were at risk. The extinction of birds, he wrote, “is like the loss of a gallery of the artists of old time.” “Wild beast and birds,” he said on another occasion, “are by right not the property merely of the people who are alive today, but the property of unknown generations, whose belongings we gave no right to squander.”
In March 1903, Roosevelt swung into action. He notified the Attorney General of his desire to declare Pelican Island, off the coast of Florida, as a federal wildlife refuge. He knew that, unlike the national forests, he had no statute authorizing the creation of wildlife refuges. Indeed, there had never been such a thing as a wildlife refuge.
A few days later, a government attorney came to the White House to deliver the legal opinion of the Justice Department. He solemnly intoned that “I cannot find any law that will allow you to do this, Mr. President.”
“But,” replied TR, rising to his full height, “is there a law that will prevent it?” The lawyer, now frowning, replied that there was not. The President responded, “very well. I so declare it.”
Pelican Island Wildlife Refuge—one congressman pronounced it “the fad of game preservation run start raving mad”—became the first of 55 wildlife preserves declared by Roosevelt. They have since been joined by 500 others, at least one in every state, to constitute today’s National Wildlife Refuge System.
The Antiquities Act of 1906 grants presidents authority to create national monuments, similar to national parks. The bill was the brainchild of Edgar Lee Hewett, an archaeologist who wanted to allow presidential set asides of small areas of land in order to protect ancient Indian villages and relics in the Southwest from grave robbers. In order to put a ceiling on the size of these national monuments, the statute set a maximum size of “the smallest area practicable,” words that seem highly restrictive but amounted to a wide open door to the full-speed-ahead president.
Within months, TR made use of this power, establishing national monuments at Devils Tower in Wyoming; El Morro, Montezuma Castle, Petrified Forest, and Chaco Canyon in Arizona and New Mexico; and elsewhere. But what of the “smallest area practicable” limitation for a President who was not much enthused by limitations? Well, John Muir had implored TR to visit a certain gorge in Arizona….
And so Roosevelt reflected on the Grand Canyon and found that, under these circumstances, the smallest area practicable could be quite expansive indeed. On January 11, 1908, he designated much of the Canyon as a national monument. "Let this great wonder of nature remain as it now is,” he declared. “You cannot improve on it. But what you can do is keep it for your children, your children’s children, and all who come after you, as the one great sight which every American should see."
TR proclaimed 18 national monuments in all. Especially with the designation of the Grand Canyon, he left future presidents with a powerhouse of a statute whose words are so modest. Later presidents, acting unilaterally without needing congressional approval under the Antiquities Act, have been able to conserve vast landscapes, most notably in Alaska and the Southwest.
You will hear people say that it is an historical accident that the most capitalistic nation in the world holds so much government land. It is no historical accident. It was a central aim of the Progressives and their leader, Theodore Roosevelt. They believed to their depths that large blocks of lands, many of them America’s glory lands, must remain forever public, open to the people. That’s why they created so many federal parks, forests, monuments, and wildlife preserves and set up agencies and regulations to ensure their protection. Yes, permanent federal protection was and still is the core policy and it is due, first and foremost, to the brave and visionary president who gave his nation a gift for the ages—his age, our age, and every age to follow.
America’s Top 10 Conservation Heroes is a series honoring the individuals and organizations that have made the biggest mark on conservation, environmental protection, and awareness of the outdoors. The series is written by Charles Wilkinson, Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado and author of fourteen books on law, history, and society in the American West.
Header Photo: John Muir in the High Sierra in 1902 (Credit: Library of Congress)
America’s Top 10 Conservation Heroes
1. Theodore Roosevelt
2. John Muir
3. Rachel Carson
4. Stewart Udall
5. Aldo Leopold
6. Ansel Adams
7. Earthjustice
8. Henry David Thoreau
9. Edward Abbey
10. Bruce Babbitt