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as a U.S. president—became an environmental crusader and scold. Derision toward unsportsmanlike hunters was more amplified than in his previous outdoor books and essays. “The big game hunter should be a field naturalist,” Roosevelt wrote. “If possible, he should be an adept with the camera; and hunting with the camera will tax his skill far more than hunting with the rifle, while the results in the long run give much greater satisfaction. Wherever possible he should keep a note-book, and should carefully study and record the habits of the wild creatures, especially when in some remote regions to which trained scientific observers but rarely have access. If we could only produce a hunter who would do for American big game what John Burroughs has done for the smaller wild life of hedgerow and orchard, farm and garden and grove, we should indeed be fortunate.”58

He urged all sportsmen to immediately become naturalists, keeping detailed notes about wildflowers, prairie grasses, and swamp fronds. Even if the would-be hunter didn’t “possess the literary faculty and powers of trained observation necessary for such a task,” Roosevelt instructed, he could nevertheless “do his part toward adding to our information by keeping careful notes of all important facts which he comes across.” Attempting to create North American field guides from the ground up—something akin to the later regional WPA guides—Roosevelt wanted everyday citizens to partake in inventorying the nation’s natural resources. “Such note-books would show the changed habits of game with the changed seasons, their abundance at different times and different places, the melancholy data of their disappearance, the pleasanter facts as to their change of habits which enable them to continue to exist in the land, and, in short, all their traits,” he wrote. “A real and lasting service would thereby be rendered, not only to naturalists, but to all who care for nature.”59

Unbeknownst to Roosevelt’s opponents in spring 1902, his desk at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue had already become a rubber-stamp center for any serious-minded conservationist or natural resources specialist with an honest agenda. Already he was thinking of how best, with a modicum of good sense, to repopulate a federal forest reserve with his Bronx Zoo bison. Regularly, he was staying in touch with William T. Hornaday. Together they also had high hopes of someday creating a national elk reserve near Yellowstone. “Surely all men who care for nature, no less than all men who care for big game hunting, should combine to try to see that not merely the states but the Federal authorities make every effort, and are given every power, to prevent the extermination of this stately and beautiful animal,” he wrote of elk. “The lordliest of the deer kind in the entire world.”60

Although this is a chicken-or-egg situation, the Bronx Zoo had made a special effort to advertise its elk, mule deer, caribou, and moose as all being part of what it called “The Deer Family.” Unfortunately, despite the enthusiasm of Hornaday and Roosevelt, the zoo was failing in its efforts to breed moose and caribou in captivity. The sultriness of New York City in summer was, as Hornaday later noted, “decidedly inimical” to the project. “This densely humid and extremely saline atmosphere is about as deadly to the black-tail, caribou and moose as it is to the Eskimos,” Hornaday wrote, “and thus far we have found it an absolute impossibility to maintain satisfactory herds of those species in the ranges available for them.”61 It wasn’t enough to breed buffalo or elk in captivity. Big game refuges were needed in their western habitats. Worried about a band of dwarf elks in Kern County, California, Roosevelt had the Biological Survey move them to Sequoia National Park, where the Department of the Interior assumed the responsibility for their case.

Furthermore, on January 7, 1902, the executive committee of the Boone and Crockett Club issued its final report on how to create wildlife refuges. Washington insiders called it the Roosevelt Report (knowing full