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his originality. In September 1904 Baynes had cooked up for Roosevelt a detailed plan to reintroduce buffalo. The initiative called for Roosevelt to remove from private individuals as many of the remaining American buffalo as possible. The U.S. government would offer large-scale ranchers like Charles Goodnight and Howard Eaton a fair price ($1,000) for each buffalo they owned.9 Baynes even suggested that the government acquire the few remaining Canadian herds. Once all the remaining buffalo were procured, refuges would be established for them throughout the Great Plains. The Wichita National Forest in Oklahoma would be the first. Baynes’s plan also offered a compelling reason why numerous reserves (not just the Wichitas) were needed: “If a contagious disease should strike any one of these herds not too large a proportion of the existing animals would be wiped out at the same time.”10

After the election, Baynes’s plan was put into action. Roosevelt even promoted big game preserves in his Fourth Annual Message on December 6, 1904, in a way that would have pleased George Catlin:

I desire again to urge upon the Congress the importance of authorizing the President to set aside certain portions of the reserves, or other public lands, as game refuges for the preservation of the bison, the wapiti, and other large beasts once so abundant in our woods and mountains, and on our great plains, and now tending toward extinction. We owe it to future generations to keep alive the noble and beautiful creatures which by their presence add such distinctive character to the American Wilderness.11

Just after New Year’s Day, William Temple Hornaday and Madison Grant of the New York Zoological Society went to work getting the buffalo ready for Oklahoma. The zoo herd had been donated to them by William Whitney of Massachusetts, a wealthy wildlife protection activist. At the time, the federal government owned only two herds: at Yellowstone National Park and National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C. Baynes was authorized by Roosevelt to start identifying private buffalo herds to be acquired by the federal government for a third preserve and a fourth preserve. Meanwhile, Congressman Lacey lobbied every U.S. senator about the new game reserve bill. After a few weeks of congressional seesawing, on January 24, 1905, the bill (33 Stat. L., 614) passed easily. The buffalo would soon be back on the Great Plains.

Essentially, the Wichita Forest Reserve became an experimental laboratory for the Roosevelt administration. A stipulation of the new Lacey Act was that 3,500 to 5,000 livestock grazing permits would be issued annually to local ranchers. Although hunting was strictly forbidden in the Wichitas, a special provision was made to allow wolf and coyote drives as part of a predator control program. At the time, big game managers believed that if buffalo were to survive, the wolves, coyotes, and cougars had to go. Oddly, guns were not allowed on these wolf and coyote hunts—only dogs. Secretary of Agriculture Wilson also made it clear that if these drives scared the livestock or deer, they would be abolished.

But the Wichita rangers had a more menacing threat to the ecosystem than predators. Although homesteading had been banned in the Wichitas, mining was allowed. From 1901 to 1905, prospectors poured into southwestern Oklahoma hoping to strike it rich. Shafts were built in the granite. Assay offices were set up, it seemed, in every one-horse town. Mining camps were established, including in Meers, Oreana, and Craterville. For a fleeting moment the Wichitas were like the Yukon or the Black Hills. But in the end, there was no gold, and luckily, the forest rangers were somehow able to protect the integrity of the Wichita Forest Reserve during the mining boom, with only limited damage.

From January to March 1905, on Roosevelt’s instruction, groundwork was done by the New York Zoological Society to establish the Wichita Forest Reserve and National Game Preserve.12 Secretary of Agriculture Wilson asked the Biological Survey to assist in finding the ideal