The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [354]
President Roosevelt, in particular, was anxious to bring the districts of Alaska—not officially even a territory until 1912—into the American family. But he simply had no patience for dealing with bureaucrats on Capitol Hill who didn’t know rain-fresh ferns from black-green moss. There were individual members of Congress, however, whom he greatly respected. Once again Roosevelt—this time as president—partnered with Congressman John Lacey of Iowa to save Alaskan ecosystems such as Saint Lazaria, the Pribilof Islands, the Yukon delta, and parts along the Bering Sea. Both men wanted the territory’s seal and bird rookeries, forests, and fishing streams properly managed. Roosevelt was counting on Lacey (or “the major,” as he started calling Lacey after the visit to Oskaloosa in 1903) to figure out how to build a railroad through Alaska’s mountain passes while simultaneously protecting the priceless forest reserves. What mattered most to both Roosevelt and Lacey (now being called by the Boone and Crockett Club the “father of federal game protection”) was that the incomparable wildlife of Alaska not be molested or its scenic wonders destroyed by reckless industrial capitalism. No American knew more about the dual issues of wildlife protection–forest conservation law and railroad law than Lacey—the author of both Lacey’s Railway Digest and the pro-bird Lacey Act of 1900.31 “Cannot we get the Alaska legislation through?” Roosevelt pleaded with Lacey. “It does seem to me to be very important that this republican Congress show its genuine care for the welfare of Alaska.”32
An uproar ensued throughout Alaska against the president’s tough federal game laws in 1904. A grassroots movement in Juneau sought to repeal 32 Stat. L. 327, and its voice was heard in Congress. Charging that the laws promulgated by the Boone and Crockett Club and the Roosevelt administration favored rich sportsmen from the continental United States who wanted to bag a moose in the Kenai Peninsula, Alaskans flouted the game laws, risking arrest. How dare these elitists flood into Alaska with a perfume-scented permission slip from Secretary Wilson while blue-collar hunters who actually lived in the Brooks Range or the Kenai Peninsula were being rejected by the USDA. The rallying cry of Alaska’s pioneers was “home rule.” To mitigate, if only slightly, the discord between advocates of conservation and development, the Roosevelt administration was forced to concede to the territory’s governor the right to issue permits. But capitulation went only so far. Roosevelt remained vigilant in maintaining federal control of the hunting of fur-bearing animals like seal and fox: USDA managed all fur-bearing land animals while the new Department of Commerce and Labor oversaw seals and walruses.33 And Roosevelt began developing a strategy to save birds in Alaska just as he had done in Florida, North Dakota, Michigan, and Oregon.
By now George T. Emmons was sending Roosevelt regular reports about wild Alaska. They were all well-crafted, rational, and succinct. Roosevelt seemed to relish learning that the lumber companies of the territory were furious over the Alexander Archipelago Forest Reserve decree of 1902. Letters of protest arrived at the White House from a Protestant missionary in Fort Wrangell and a businessman in Ketchikan. A U.S. congressman took up the crusade to save Alaskan commerce from the conservationism of Emmons and Roosevelt. And, of course, the Indians were opposed to the federal government’s engaging in land grabs. Roosevelt’s response to all this blowback was predictable. On September 10, 1907, he created the 17-million-acre Tongass National Forest in Southeastern Alaska, the largest ever formed. On July 1, 1908,