The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [176]
In the spring of 1895, a group from the Boone and Crockett Club officially formed the New York Zoological Society. The leaders included Roosevelt, Grant, Green, and Osborn. Behaving like fraternity brothers, they created a crest for the society, with a ram’s head in its center and “Founded 1895” underneath, long before the development plan was officially approved in late 1897.8 The 261-acre forested zoo, with a topographical range from granite ridges to natural meadows and glades to forest, was ideal for a wide variety of animals to thrive in the open air. The Bronx River wound through the site, and the woods were already home to many birds. It would be relatively easy to create marvelous replicas of diverse habitats here, allowing the wildlife to feel at home.
The zoo officially opened in November 1898, after the blitzkrieg of the Spanish-American War. Grinnell essentially fell into line, now and again flashing an over-the-shoulder look that said “I told you so” when any animal emergency transpired; Darwianism, he believed, was veterinarianism. Roosevelt was especially proud of the imposing Antelope House. But the Lion House soon became the premier tourist attraction. These “houses” were established to tell the biological history of species in a truly detailed, exciting, educational way. A special wooded range had been developed for moose, and a wonderful stream surrounded by plants was devised so children could watch industrious beavers construct dams and lodges. At the time, the new zoological park was the largest in the world, and its open-air displays became the model for its successors, such as the zoo in San Diego, which opened in 1922.
As it entertained tourists and educated schoolchildren, the zoo simultaneously served as a scientific laboratory. For example, the twenty acres reserved for buffalo allowed ample space for mammalogists to study these North American quadrupeds through the rutting cycle.9 Likewise, elk got fifteen acres in which to thrive and be observed. Moose were brought in from Maine and cougar from somewhere west of Kansas City. Aesthetically, what Roosevelt and Grant were trying to avoid was the zoo seeming like an oversized breeding pen. Bear dens were soon erected with awesome caves and rock precipices, and there were plans to build the world’s greatest House of Reptiles, which the foremost herpetologist in America, Raymond L. Ditmars, would curate. “It is extremely desirable that all animals living in the open air should be so installed that their surroundings will suggest,” the New York Times explained about the new zoo, “as a well-kept and accessible natural wilderness rather than as a conventional city park.”10
Besides breeding buffalo in captivity, the New York Zoological Society funded an extensive scientific report on the concept of creating wildlife sanctuaries or refuges across the country. Could buffalo reclaim the Black Hills, Red River Valley, or Drift Prairie of South Dakota? Would elk be able to roam freely again along the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers? Someday, would moose be protected in Maine and Minnesota? As Lincoln Lang recalled in Ranching with Roosevelt, T.R. “had discussed the possibilities of game protection,” in the 1880s and even spoke of someday establishing the North Dakota Badlands as a “national preserve.”11 With the zoological society launched, Roosevelt’s vision was no longer an impossible goal. A subtle brotherhood of men—hunters and naturalists—were now in the business of species education.
Already at Black Mesa Forest Reserve in the Arizona Territory two members of the Boone and Crockett Club—Dr. Ed W. Nelson and Alden Sampon—were studying the feasibility of a wildlife reserve in the Navajo lands, a reserve that would be completely off-limits to hunters along the upper border of the Little Colorado River basin.12 The deep box canyons, yellow pine forests, piñons,