The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [227]
Just eight months before the second annual message, at the urging of Chapman, Roosevelt had signed the Hallock Bird Protection Bill. As of May 2, 1900, it was illegal to kill and sell nongame birds for commercial purposes in New York. For the first time a state government was earnestly in the business of birds’ rights.70 The bill—named after the naturalist author Charles Hallock, a former Yalie who had founded Forest and Stream, and sponsored by the Audubon Society—regulated the hunting of birds in New York.71 Hallock was a hero to both Roosevelt and Grinnell and had a catholicity of interests to equal Thomas Jefferson’s. Besides founding Forest and Stream he was the leading expert on sunflowers (using the seeds to make clean fuel), established a game reserve in Minnesota, and originated the uniform code of game laws in America. His Camp Life in Florida had a huge impact on Roosevelt’s eco-sensibility. Hallock wrote fine books about angling, including The Salmon Fisher (1890). It was Hallock’s Vacation Rambles in Michigan (1877), in fact, that taught Roosevelt much of what he knew about the Great Lakes. Hallock maintained that America had four main flyways—Atlantic, Mississippi, Central and Pacific—and his bill would make sure they stayed as they were. Roosevelt was upbeat that America’s recklessness toward migratory birds could be rolled back.
Chapman, at the governor’s request, toured millinary factories after the law was enacted, threatening state-sanctioned shutdowns if any illegal plumage was found. Roosevelt let the Millinary Merchants Protective Association—an organization he despised—know that undercover “Audubonists” would be inspecting facilities at his request. His threat was unambiguous: the Hallock Bill had to be adhered to, and lawbreakers would be arrested.72 As John Burroughs noted, when “unholding laws like the Hallock Bill,” Roosevelt was “scrupulous in morals,” and “unflinching in what he thought to be his duty.” 73
After signing the Hallock Bill, Roosevelt wrote Frank M. Chapman a note, praising the Audubon Society for its mission. “It would be hard to overestimate the importance of its educational effects,” Roosevelt said. “Half, and more than half the beauty of the woods and fields is gone when they lose the harmless wild things, while if we could only ever get our people to the point of taking a universal and thoroughly intelligent interest in the preservation of game birds and fish, the result would be an important addition to our food supply. Ultimately people are sure to realize that to kill off all game birds and net out all fish streams is not much more sensible than it would be to kill off all the milch cows and brood mares. As for the birds that are the special object of the preservation of your Society we should keep them just as we keep trees. They add immeasurably to the wholesome beauty of life.”74
Keep in mind, however, that Governor Roosevelt wasn’t working in a vacuum when he signed the Hallock Bird Proection Bill. By the time he had been sworn in as governor in January 1899, studying the typology of birds had become a popular movement in America, in large part because of the success of the Audubon Society’s first national promotion of bird-watching. When Roosevelt said that birds mattered, millions of people listened because they were already predisposed to the Audubon movement and admired its new celebrity spokesperson. Not that Roosevelt was opposed to killing birds for science—far from it. Only by collecting specimens could a naturalist like himself properly study eye lines for su-perciliary stripes, eye rings, spectacles, mustache marks, malar marks, and ear patches.75 What infuriated Roosevelt and aroused his righteous indignation, were the market hunters who were harming not just New York but the entire Florida ecosystem. When he invited ornithologists to the executive mansion in Albany, Roosevelt would hold court, floating various ideas on how to derail the millinary industry.
Governor Roosevelt used his new