The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [172]
Whether or not Muir influenced Roosevelt’s thinking remains unclear; what we do know, however, is that Roosevelt soon dialed back on pounding the railroad industry. Nevertheless, he continued to assail the avarice of timber barons, illegal game hunters, metallurgical fiends, real estate dealers, and souvenir poachers bent on disregarding the U.S. government’s “No Trespassing” postings. With a gleam of white teeth, Roosevelt attacked the “baseness of spirit” of such Coloradan politicians as Senator Teller and Governor Davis Waite with a steady barrage of invective. Tired of Rooseveltian theatrics, they, in turn, wanted to clap a chloroformed bandana over his mouth once and for all. While John Burroughs preferred fellowship over invective, he knew the “great cause” of wilderness protection needed the bluntness of his new friend’s militant temperament. “Roosevelt was the man of the clenched fist,” Burroughs wrote years later in The Last Harvest, “not one to stir up strife, but a merciless hitter in what he believed a just cause.” 75
Roosevelt continued to push his conservationist agenda forward. He soon wrote to Captain Anderson that the new legislation could be improved. President Cleveland’s protection act was “by no means as good,” Roosevelt maintained, as what the Boone and Crockett Club demanded. The bill, he feared, had ambiguous overtones. With unabated ardor, Roosevelt wanted opprobrium names and public humiliation hurled at dishonorable men like Howell through Wyoming’s newspapers. W. Hallett Phillips of the Boone and Crockett Club wrote to Captain Anderson, in fact, saying that “Roosevelt says you made the greatest mistake of your life in not accidentally having that scoundrel [Howell] killed and he speaks as if he would have shot him on the spot.” 76 Regardless, Roosevelt couldn’t deny that the Yellowstone Game Protection Act was a giant leap in the right direction. To cough up $1,000 or spend two years in jail—the harsh penalty suddenly imposed on poachers for merely shooting an elk or deer on U.S. government property—was a serious deterrent in 1894. At the end of this letter to Captain Anderson, Roosevelt admitted that Cleveland’s act was “a good deal better than the present systems,” adding that “at least [it] gives us a groundwork on which to go.” 77
Another worry for Roosevelt after May 7 was his fear that Yellowstone buffalo—believed to be among the last remnant herds in the United States—would still fall prey to poachers if the number of U.S. Army personnel in the park wasn’t dramatically increased more than the act provided. There were fewer than twenty buffalo in Yellowstone—with its high altitude and harsh winters the park wasn’t a natural environment for them, but inside the park they were now protected. Roosevelt kept grappling with the larger question of how to save the buffalo in the long term. The Smithsonian Institution was floating a plan that involved fencing them in, which he was lukewarm about. Before long, Roosevelt started touting the notion of breeding buffalo in zoos and then reintroducing them throughout the western forest reserves, particularly in their traditional grounds like the Black Hills, Pine Ridge Reservation, Flint Hills, and Wichita Mountains.78
Most important, Roosevelt believed that westerners would have to become good wildlife protectionists themselves in order for buffalo herds, national parks, and forest reserves to remain unmolested. Regular citizens would have to turn in poachers, even if the poachers were friends