The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [256]
Forest reserves aside, President Roosevelt looked back in bafflement over why McKinley had rejected stringent wildlife protection laws. Didn’t McKinley want elk and antelope to populate the Great Plains? Was he really opposed to a moose reserve for Maine? The fact of the matter was that McKinley simply hadn’t wanted to squander political capital with powerful western senators over what he considered fringe issues, such as protecting ungulates. That indifference immediately changed with Roosevelt in power. From the get-go Pinchot, in fact, at Roosevelt’s behest, had brought into the forefront of U.S. conservation policy initiatives which the Boone and Crockett Club had formulated: mainly, having game reserves inside national forests. Anxious for his administration to make these bold leaps toward wildlife protection, Roosevelt asked Gifford Pinchot to push the ideas about game reserves through Congress. It didn’t prove easy going for Pinchot. Western development interests didn’t give a damn about buffalo, deer, and elk. Working with the Boone and Crockett Club and the New York Zoological Society, Roosevelt, with the essential help of Congressman Lacey, nevertheless soon made historic strides in getting wildlife protection legislation.
Deciding unilaterally to change the name of the Executive Mansion to the White House that October, Roosevelt asked Pinchot to head the Division of Forestry in Interior. He promised him “an absolutely free hand”—free, that is, from the gaze of Ethan Allen Hitchcock. Roosevelt claimed his White House desperately needed Pinchot’s help on selecting ideal sites for forest preserves and on intelligent habitat management (including selective timber thinning and brush control). As a lure or incentive Roosevelt told Pinchot that his recommendations for forestry would become—in essence—the de facto administration policy. Pinchot, not Hitchcock, would be the ultimate arbiter at Interior. And while ostensibly Pinchot was merely head of a division, in reality he would have more power than Secretary Hitchcock or the GLO commissioner, Binger Hermann (a former Republican congressman who was an attorney in Oregon). Hitchcock would be a useful figurehead—and an ally of sorts—kept only to placate the McKinley’s old guard. As for Hermann, he smelled to Roosevelt like an enemy, an Oregonian more interested in pork for river and harbor appropriations than in protecting places like Crater Lake, Three Arch Rocks, or the Cascades. Point-blank reality was that Pinchot (as division head) would be making federal forestry policy.25 (Later, in 1905, Pinchot would become the first chief of the new forestry service).
Gladly, Pinchot accepted the president’s gracious offer. In the coming years their vigorous friendship continued to blossom. Roosevelt found Pinchot to be a bundle of invaluable insights. Together they would often hike in Rock Creek Park, swim in the Potomac River, play tennis, watch birds, and chop firewood near National Cathedral School. While Pinchot wasn’t given to lyrical outpourings like Burroughs or Grinnell, he was a far better conservationist tactician than anybody else orbiting around Roosevelt. In Roosevelt’s so-called “tennis cabinet” (“kitchen cabinet” sounded too sissified for Roosevelt), Pinchot was probably his most trusted colleague. Pinchot, in fact, became something of a “faithful bodyguard,” always willing to defend Roosevelt from attacks.26 Seldom did Roosevelt and Pinchot see things through different lenses. (There, however, was one big difference between them: Roosevelt was first