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The Philosophy and The Fire - Jim Posewitz
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ROOSEVELT and LEOPOLD
The Philosophy and The Fire
Leopold photo by Robert McCabe from Fierce Green Fire, Falcon Publishing
Jim Posewitz
Orion the Hunter’s Institute
INTRODUCTION
The basis for a substainable coalition is mutual understanding of, and respect for, each component group’s interest. Respect and understanding will be the rock upon which coalition building is possible. For the past three years I have worked with hunter educators and hunting organizations in over thirty states. Every program, every speech, every seminar, every appearance starts the same way. I address the group’s heritage story, acknowledge their conservation achievement, and recognize their conservation heros. It is a practice borrowed from the nautical tradition of saluting the colors before boarding a vessel—a demonstration of respect. Without exception, showing respect has always suceeded. In subsequent evaluations, it is the most frequently mentioned and appreciated aspect of our programs. Just as important, is the idea of learning about a particular interest group’s potential as an ally, by learning what they are capable of achieving. A coalition with hunters and anglers will be an important component in resolving the fate of America’s wild lands. For that reason I will use the limited space available to give you an example of two things. One, the track of the hunter through the Wilderness movement; and the other, a small piece of the heritage story that every Wilderness advocate should know and appreciate. It is the truth within our history as wild land beneficiaries; it is your and my history. “TO THINK STRAIGHT ON RECREATIONAL QUALITY, AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE IS ESSENTIAL” A. Leopold: in Wilderness Values,The Living Wilderness, 1942.
AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
“… and the dogs would have killed it, but as it was doing some damage to the pack, I ended the struggle by a knife-thrust behind the shoulder.” “… while I jammed the gun-butt into her jaws with my left hand and struck home with the right, the knife driving straight to the heart … The deep fang marks she left in the stock, … gave an idea of the power of her jaws.” 1 This description of the death of two mountain lions in 1901, are the words of the man who had just been elected Vice-President of the United States. On January 11, 1901 Theodore Roosevelt (TR) took off five weeks and went mountain lion hunting near Meeker Colorado.He, more than anyone else, is why we hunt today. It may also be: that his legacy, and philosophy, are powerful enough to impact the resolution of America’s wild lands as we address their fate in a new millennia. Fifteen years prior, in 1886, TR wrote to John Willis a Montana hunter inquiring about hunting mountain goats, asking Willis to be his guide. After puzzling over Roosevelt’s bad hand writing Willis scribbled across the letter, “If you can’t shoot any better than you can write, NO.” TR came anyhow and it began a conversion for both men. TR grew to a hardened mountain hunter and Willis, began changing from a hide and market killer to a conservationist. It was reported of that first trip: “On this trip Theodore talked constantly to Willis, who made his living by slaughtering game for their hides, about the necessity for conserving wildlife. Although he would not admit it at the time, Theodore had made of him a staunch believer in conservation and he thereafter not only ceased to be a game butcher but had become a strong worker for its preservation.” 2 When TR went to Butte, Montana as president, Willis was there to greet him. When Willis saw Roosevelt, he blurted out, “My god Theodore where in the hell did you get that pot belly?” While the host committee gasped, TR roared with laughter. Willis went on, “You know I made a man of you and now you are spoiling all my work.” TR responded, “Yes, and I made a Christian of you and don’t spoil my work.” 3 The fire that the west had nurtured in Roosevelt’s blood was lodged there for life. It was a fire that would serve the nation well – in particular the cause of wild land. Theodore Roosevelt never stopped being “..a man…” and I suspect that his reference to Christianity was a metaphor for conservationist in the case of John Willis. When the two met in 1886, the American west was in the final stages of being stripped of its wildlife. Two years previous the buffalo hide shipments down the Missouri River from Fort Benton, Montana had dropped to zero, from a peak of 80,000 recorded in 1876.4 Three years after TR’s hunt with Willis, Roosevelt, hunting in Idaho would kill one of the last free ranging bison in North America. When TR was born there were about 10 Americans per square mile in the United States: at the time, there were about 17 buffalo per square mile. When TR entered the White House (42 years later) there were around 25 Americans per square mile in the country and between 20 and 40 bison left, in sanctuary within Yellowstone National Park.5 While in the Presidency Theodore Roosevelt, the hunter, began the remarkable odyssey that would restore wildlife to this nation, while protecting a land base that would eventually embrace a Wilderness system. • He did it by laying down a philosophy for conservation that fit our young nation, • He did it by taking direct action, and • He did it by protecting a vast acreage of unclaimed forest lands. Roosevelt’s Philosophy TR’s philosophy is best reflected in his own words. It is a view that embraces hunting, the strenuous life and the idea that these things could be preserved for all people. Listen to the voice of our 26th President reaching for us across the span of a century.
From “THE WAPITI OR ROUND-HORNED ELK 6 No chase is more fascinating than that of the wapiti. … Every true sportsman should feel it incumbent upon him to do all in his power to preserve so noble a beast of the chase from extinction. In a civilized and cultivated country wild animals only continue to exist at all when preserved by sportsmen. The excellent people who protest against all hunting, and consider sportsmen as enemies of wild life, are ignorant of the fact that in reality the genuine sportsman is by all odds the most important factor in keeping the larger and more valuable wild creatures from total extermination. A peculiar charm in the chase of the wapiti comes from the wild beauty of the country in which it dwells. All really wild scenery is attractive. The true hunter, the true lover of the wilderness, loves all parts of the wilderness, just as the true lover of nature loves all seasons.
From WILDERNESS RESERVES: THE YELLOWSTONE PARK7 Above all , we should realize that the effort toward this end is essentially a democratic movement. It is … in our power … to preserve large tracts of wilderness … and to preserve game … for … all lovers of nature, and to give reasonable opportunities for the exercise of the skill of the hunter, whether he is or is not a man of means. “The professional market hunter who kills game for the hide or for the feathers or for the meat or to sell antlers and other trophies; market men who put game in cold storage; and the rich people, who are content to buy what they have not the skill o get by their own exertions – these are the men who re the real enemies of game.”
From BIRD PRESERVES AT THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI 8 The movement for the conservation of wildlife, and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources, are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose and method.
From PIONEER CONSERVATIONISTS OF EASTERN AMERICA9 We do not intend that our natural resources shall be exploited by the few against the interests of the many,… Our aim is to preserve our natural resources for the public as a whole, for the average man and the average woman who make up the body of the American people. Roosevelt’s Direct Action “I admire men who take the first step, not those who theorize about the 200th step.”10
From: T.R.’s WILDERNESS LEGACY 11 “I hate a man who would skin the land,…” When Theodore Roosevelt left the White House in 1909 he had enriched the nation by 230 million acres of wild land brought under public protection. Proclaiming: “Conservation of our natural resources is the most weighty question now before the people of the United States.” While in office, TR: • proclaimed the first federal wildlife refuges— 50 of them, • doubled the number of national parks, • designated the first 18 national monuments, including the Grand Canyon, • added nearly 150 million acres to the national forest reserves, and • convened the first North American Conservation Congress. 12 The Forest Reserves “His (TR’s) greatest crusader was Gifford Pinchot, who with T.R. founded the U.S. Forest Service and swelled its reserves from 43 million to 194 million acres.” 13 The people loved the Roosevelt agenda, in 1904 he was swept into the White House by the largest majority in the history of the nation.14 At the height of his popularity a visiting Englishman observed: “Roosevelt is not an American, you know. He is America.” 15 When you play, play hard; when you work, don’t play at all.
THEORDORE ROOSEVELT Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‘em, “Certainly, I can!” Then get busy and find out how to do it. THEORDORE ROOSEVELT THE WILDERNESS IDEA Aldo Leopold’s Wilderness Vision Aldo Leopold addressed the origin of the wilderness idea. Writing in The Living Wilderness (July 1940 pp 7 – 9), in an article titled Origin and Ideals of Wilderness Areas. In the article he noted the earliest action (1922 – 13years after TR leaves the White House) he could find: “The earliest action I can find in my files is a letter dated September 21, 1922, notifying the District Forester that two local Game Protective Associations had endorsed the establishment of a wilderness area on the head of the Gila River, in the Gila National Forest.” In The History of the Cabinet Wilderness by Cindy Hemry (undated) (1p mimeo) there can be found a consistent similarity. “On February 20, 1932, at a local Rod and Gun Club in Missoula the idea of establishing a “primitive area” in the Cabinet Mountains was first presented to Kootenai Supervisor C.S. Webb. This was the beginning Of what would take three years to accomplish.” Writing in the Journal of Forest History (July 1985 pp 112 – 125) Dennis Roth, in an article titled The National Forests and the Campaign for Wilderness Legislation, states: “Leopold looked at wilderness through the eyes of a hunter and budding ecologist. Writing in 1925 Leopold noted: “Wilderness areas in the National Forests would serve especially the wildernesshunter, …” 16 Addressing Wilderness Values in The Living Wilderness (March 1942) Leopold wrote: “Good professional research in wilderness ecology is destined to become more and more a matter of perception; good wilderness sports are destined to converge on the same point. A sportsman is one who has the propensity for perception in his bones. Trigger-itch, wanderlust, and buckfever are simply the genetical raw materials out of which perception is built.”
THE WILDERNESS ACT 1964 THE PEOPLE’S STRUGGLE FOR WILD PLACES Cecil Garland and the Scapegoat Wilderness U.S. Forest Service historian Dennis M. Roth identifies the Lincoln-Scapegoat Wilderness debate and classification in 1972 as: “… the first strictly citizen wilderness proposal made after the passage of the Wilderness Act.”17 One of two leaders of that citizen campaign was Cecil Garland, Lincoln, Montana businessman and hunter. The following is a piece of the testimony Cecil delivered before a U.S. Senate hearing and it demonstrate where and how his wilderness advocacy generated. “Senator Burdick, Senator Metcalf, and ladies and gentlemen: Fifteen years ago, when I first brought my family to the community of Lincoln, I was told of a great wild country to the north known as the Back Country. They told me with awe in their voices of places called Ringeye, Scotty Creek, Lost Pony, Red Mountain, the East Fork, the North Fork, Parker Lake, Meadow Lake, the Twin Lakes and an almost unworldly country called Scapegoat and Half Moon Park. I longed to see that country, to know its wild beauty, to catch its fish, to hunt its game, and to climb its mountains. Unusually wonderful, it was then, when the time came to pack our camp and move away from roads that led back to that world we call civilization. We camped that first night on a small bench above Ringeye Falls. Taking down our tent from an old frame that the pack rats were using for a home, we made a secure camp, cooked our supper, fed our stock, and then turned our complete thoughts to our whereabouts. 18 We took from our duffle an old reed elk bugle and as the chill air fell with the sun we shattered the calm of that September evening with a blast from our elk call. Then almost as by magic, above us on Red Mountain a bull elk bugled his challenge that this was his home. All through the frosty fall air the calls echoed back and forth and I knew that I had found wilderness. I would not sleep that night for I was trying to convince myself that this was really so; that there was wild country like this left and that somehow I had found it. But all was not at peace in my heart for I knew that someday, for some unknown reason, man would try to destroy this country, as man had altered and destroyed before. That night I made a vow that whatever the cost for whatever the reason, I would do all that I could to keep this country as wild as I had found it.” Behind the leadership of Montana’s U.S. Senator, at the time Lee Metcalf, Cecil’s vow was validated. In addition, America had a new model – citizen generated Wilderness proposals.
HUNTING WILD PLACES AND HONOR THROUGH EFFORT FROM THEODORE ROOSEVELT “We knew toil and hardship and hunger and thirst,… but we felt the beat of hardy life in our veins, and ours was the glory of work and the joy of living.”19 “When hunting him (wapiti) there is always sweet cold water to be drunk at night, and beds of aromatic fir boughs… He must be followed on foot, and the man who follows him must be sound in limb and wind.” 20 “But the mountains are the true ground for the wapiti. Here he must be hunted on foot, and nowadays, since he has grown wiser, skill and patience, and the capacity to endure fatigue and exposure, must be shown by the successful hunter.” 21
THE WILDLIFE RENISANNCE Theodore Roosevelt entered the White House when our nation’s wildlife was experiencing its darkest hour. Had there been an endangered species act most every species of big game animal would have qualified. However, inspired by Roosevelt’s deeds and convinced that his philosophy was a bold articulation of their own beliefs, the wildlife conservation movement was born. The results from TR’s time to the present are awesome. When the 20th Century began: • there were about 12,000 antelope left in the United States, today there are a million.26 • Wild turkeys slipped to about 100 thousand nation-wide, today there are more than 4 million.27 • White-tailed deer had faded to 500 thousand, today there are about 30 million.28 • When TR was scouring the deep mountains for a last remnant of elk, the nation had about 41 thousand hanging on in western wild-lands. Today there are nearly a million 29 and they are back in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas.
1 The Hunting and Exploring Adventure of Theodore Roosevelt: Told In His Own Words, Edited by Donald Day, Dial Press, New York, 1955.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Saga of the Sun, Picton and Picton
5 A Look Behind, a look ahead, Larry Jahn, Wyoming Wildlife, January 2000.
6 T. Roosevelt, The Wapiti or Round-Horned Elk, from Outdoor Pastimes of An American
Hunter, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905, pp. 286-319, (Taken from Schullery,
Theordore Roosevelt Wilderness Writings, Salt Lake City, Peregrine Smith Books, 1986.)
7 T. Roosevelt, Wilderness Reserves: The Yellowstone Park, from Outdoor Pastimes of an
American Hunter, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905, pp 320-353. (Taken from
Schullery, Theordore Roosevelt Wilderness Writings, Salt Lake City, Peregrine Smith Books,
1986.)
8 T. Roosevelt, Bird Reserves at the Mouth of the Mississippi, from A Book-Lovers Holidays in
the Open, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916, pp 274-317. (Taken from Schullery,
Theordore Roosevelt Wilderness Writings, Salt Lake City, Peregrine Smith Books, 1986.)
9 Peter Wild, Pioneer Conservationists of Eastern America, Missoula, MT., Mountain Press
Publishing, 1986 (p85).
10 Taken from Public Broadcasting System (PBS) Home Video, Theodore Roosevelt, The
Presidents Collection.
11 John Eliot, ROOSEVELT COUNTRY TR’s WILDERNESS LEGACY, National Geographic, Vol.
162, No. 3, September 1982 (pp 340-362).
12 Ibid. In 1907 congress forced a showdown with TR’s forest reserve program that would
henceforth permit only congress to create new reserves in Oregon, Washington, Idaho,
Montana, Colorado and Wyoming. In the eight days TR had to consider the bill he designated
21 new reserves totaling 16 million acres. TR’s midnight proclamations.
13 Ibid. (p346).
14 Peter Wild, Pioneer Conservationists of Eastern America, Missoula, MT., Mountain Press
Publishing, 1986 (p90)
15 Ibid. (p81).
16 Aldo Leopold, The Last Stand of the Wilderness, American Forests and Forest Life,
October 1925.
17 Roth, Dennis M. The Wilderness Movement and the National Forests: 1964 –1980, U.S.
Forest Service Publication FS-391, December 1984.
18 Posewitz, et.al., Fish and Wildlife Plan, The Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, Montana
Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, 1991 (177pp mimeo).
19 John Eliot, ROOSEVELT COUNTRY TR’s WILDERNESS LEGACY, National Geographic, Vol.
162, No. 3, September 1982 (pp 340-362).
20 T. Roosevelt, The Wapiti or Round-Horned Elk, from Outdoor Pastimes of An American
Hunter, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905, pp. 286-319, (Taken from Schullery,
Theodore Roosevelt Wilderness Writings, Salt Lake City, Peregrine Smith Books, 1986.)
21 T. Roosevelt, The Wapiti or Round-Horned Elk, from Outdoor Pastimes of An American
Hunter, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905, pp. 286-319, (Taken from Schullery,
Theodore Roosevelt Wilderness Writings, Salt Lake City, Peregrine Smith Books, 1986.)
22 Theodore Rooservelt, The Strenuous Life, (a speech delivered in Chicago in 1905)
Applewood Books, Inc., Dedford, MA, 1991.
23 John Eliot, ROOSEVELT COUNTRY TR’s WILDERNESS LEGACY, National Geographic, Vol.
162, No. 3, September 1982 (pp 340-362).
24 T. Roosevelt, The Wapiti or Round-Horned Elk, from Outdoor Pastimes of An American
Hunter, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905, pp. 286-319, (Taken from Schullery,
Theodore Roosevelt Wilderness Writings, Salt Lake City, Peregrine Smith Books, 1986.)
25 T. Roosevelt, The Wapiti or Round-Horned Elk, from Outdoor Pastimes of An American
Hunter, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905, pp. 286-319, (Taken from Schullery,
Theodore Roosevelt Wilderness Writings, Salt Lake City, Peregrine Smith Books, 1986.)
26 Printed by Safari Club International 1998, sources cited: USFWS, Wildlife Management
Institute, Whitetails Unlimited, and National Wild Turkey Federation.
27 Ibid.
28 Brian Murphy, Editorial, Quality Whitetails, Vol. 6, Issue 4.
29 Op. Cit., Safari Club International.
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