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New York repopulation plan would reintroduce buffalo in their traditional grounds, such as the Black Hills, Pine Ridge Reservation, Flint Hills, Osage Hills, and Wichita Mountains; even the remaining herd in Yellowstone Park would be augmented with Bronx-bred buffalo. As Roosevelt saw it, buffalo would once again be trampling the luxuriant tall grasses into muddy thoroughfares, as in the days before Christopher Columbus. Unlike the 45 million cattle in the Great Plains, reinroduced buffalo wouldn’t overgraze the prairie into a dust bowl. He hoped to create a buffalo common. While there were few dramas as frightening as a bison bull at bay, zoologically schooled members of the Boone and Crockett Club like Roosevelt and Grant nevertheless knew that buffaloes were essentially timid creatures, as easy to corral as cattle. Only when a mother buffalo felt that her young were in jeopardy did they turn frothingly hostile, staving off predators such as wolves and cougars with the threat of a horrific stampede. Then look out! Buffalo might appear slow and lumbering, but they could outrun a racehorse. As domesticated creatures, however, they were fairly benign.5

While George Bird Grinnell was supportive of a Buffalo common in the West, he thought bison needed lots of roving space to survive and that the New York grasses were completely different from those on the plains. Therefore, he wasn’t keen on the Boone and Crockett Club’s throwing its weight behind acquiring wildlife for display in New York City; he preferred having the members concentrate on enacting tougher hunting laws. Running a zoo was a headache he simply didn’t want. To Grinnell it made more practical sense to have the Department of Agriculture help C. J. Jones of Garden City, Kansas—who had captured fifty buffalo on his own and purchased an additional eighty in Manitoba—lead a serious repopulation program right in the heartland of “Buffalo Country.”6

The Great American Buffalo was drawn by Audubo

The Great American Buffalo. (Courtesy of the Boone and Crockett Club)

But, as was often the case, Roosevelt got his way. He insisted that the zoo would teach New Yorkers about the perils western big-game species faced. Also, the zoo allowed Roosevelt, as a New York politician, to found something great for the Empire State, an added political bonus. One of the zoo’s most tireless advocates, in fact, was Andrew H. Green, then known as the “father” of greater New York City. When Green concurred that a natural-setting zoo was a fine idea, long overdue, Roosevelt knew his brainchild would take off. A truly creative philanthropist, Green had been a close friend of Roosevelt’s father, envisioned Central Park as a recreational center, bankrolled the American Museum of Natural History, investigated the Tweed Ring, and created the Niagara Falls Commission to save the falls from destruction in a bilateral agreement with the Canadian government. Grinnell warned his friends against forming a zoo committee in late 1894 before club members could, at the very least, vote on the idea. They should settle their differences, Grinnell believed, through at least a tip of the hat toward the democratic process.

But Roosevelt, spurred by his idea about buffalo, had another important ally besides Green and Grant. Professor Fairfield Osborn of Columbia University, curator of the American Museum of Natural History, sided with Roosevelt (as he always did), even offering his fund-raising contact list. Starting in the 1890s Osborn had become quite a fixture in zoological circles. The refined, fashionable Osborn would tuck a paisley scarf into his collar instead of a tie, sported corduroy pants, and was constantly jotting notes on legal pads while chain-smoking cigarettes. Green was the first president of the New York Zoological Society, but when he became suddenly ill Osborn took over the obligations. Deep down, Roosevelt probably knew that Grinnell was correct in his skepticism. Roosevelt nevertheless wrote to Madison Grant—whose hand-tailored suits and donnish manners made him a kind of WASP caricature,