The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [367]
At the time of his inauguration, as if presenting himself with a gift, Roosevelt saved yet another North Dakota birding roost near Devils Lake.79 Stump Lake was ten miles long and two and a half miles wide and teemed with migratory waterfowl. On four islets in the lake, thousands of ducks bred during the nesting season. White pelicans, in particular, bred in the wetlands ecosystem. Unlike brown pelicans, known for diving, the American white pelican, which flocks in a V, feeds by dipping its bill into a lake for fish.80 Roosevelt knew that Stump Lake was a popular spot for oologists, a subgroup of ornithologists who focus on collecting and analyzing bird eggs. Anxious to put the oologists (that is, those not affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution or the American Museum or some similar scientific outfit) out of business, Roosevelt had an executive order prepared for signing. Thousands of eggs were being stripped from Stump Lake, and two generations were killed off in a “hit,” as the theft was called in Grand Forks and Fargo. Secretary of Agriculture Wilson had written a letter to Roosevelt suggesting that the North Dakota islets be preserved. “In view of the fact that the season is close at hand when ducks will return to Stump Lake to breed,” Wilson wrote on March 5, “I respectfully recommend that the reserve be created at an early date, in order that ample time may be given to make the preparations necessary to afford the birds full protection during the breeding season of 1905.”81
Four days later, on March 9, Roosevelt declared Stump Lake his third federal bird reservation, placing it on the “same footing” as Pelican Island and Breton Island.82 Part of his rationale for creating Stump Lake—and Sully’s Hill, for that matter—was his sad realization that Canada reared most of North America’s wild fowl while the United States did the slaughtering. His thinking would prove to be prescient. Around this same time, encouraged by Congressman Lacey, Roosevelt began envisioning a coordinated system of bird reservations from Lake of the Woods to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Aleutians of Alaska to Nihoa Island in Hawaii.
The bird protection movement was gaining momentum. Pelican Island, Breton Island, and now Stump Lake had been created. Many others were on the agenda. Birds were also being saved in Roosevelt’s national forests. And Roosevelt was just getting started with his other preservationist ideas for the territories of Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE OKLAHOMA HILLS (OR, WHERE THE BUFFALO PRESIDENT ROAMS)
I
Following his inauguration in March 1905 Roosevelt became focused on hunting gray wolves (or coyotes) in Texas and Oklahoma. Removed from the rigors of campaigning, he wanted to see the so-called Spirit Trail of the Wichita Mountains and watch the sun drop beyond long reaches of flatlands known as the Big Pasture (a part of the Kiowa-Comanche reservation in southwestern Oklahoma south of the Wichita Mountains and north of the Red River of the South). The time to reinvent himself, during the spring, had again come. As an added incentive, bones of ancient elephants—mammoths—were rumored to have been found around Domebo Canyon in Oklahoma; perhaps he’d be able to inspect a few. Working through Colonel Cecil Andrew Lyon—the chairman of the Texas Republican state executive committee, known for his quick laugh and his lack of artifice—Roosevelt was primarily concerned about not repeating the Mississippi bear hunt. Because in 1905 Texas had no Republican U.S. congressmen