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By Root 4001 0

Roosevelt congratulated Finley on Oregon’s Model Law for birds. Finley inquired about Three Arch Rocks. The conversation went back and forth like that for an entire evening. The two naturalists discussed how to preserve lower Klamath Lake as a breeding ground for native birds. The Klamath basin was a large area of land, which dwarfed Crater Lake. In Florida, Roosevelt was creating federal bird reservations of forty to 200 acres. If Klamath was declared a reservation, it would be something like 80,000 acres. Further complicating the situation was the fact that the Reclamation Service was draining the wetlands for large-scale agricultural farming. Finley told Roosevelt that his Klamath irrigation project—while obviously a well-intended offshoot of the Newlands Act—was turning wetlands into mudflats. “We move to conserve or develop one resource,” Finley complained, “while at the same time, we are destroying another.”107

Roosevelt thought Finley had the right stuff. He was a well-spoken, accomplished young man, rather overly serious, but otherwise with no discernible flaw. He had a wonderful scientifically inclined mind, which appreciated that even maggots had an important role in nature, feeding grackles and nighthawks. Also, Finley could make even a magpie nest sound as interesting as the Taj Mahal. Like Chapman, he was doing a fine job of popularizing birding. Sunset magazine—aimed at middle-class families—had published a few of his well-written ornithological pieces. Perhaps knowing that Roosevelt had a soft spot for the American white pelican (Roosevelt had, in fact, saved both Stump Lake and Chase Lake in North Dakota largely for their benefit), and much like Pinchot and La Farge in 1900 regaling Roosevelt with stories about Mount Marcy, Finley told of rowing in puffs of wind, making treacherous landings, putting up rough campsites, setting up a blind near Rattlesnake Island, and seeing half-grown pelicans and hearing their cries. Combined with the home movies, all this was quite a pitch. What image could have appealed to Roosevelt more than Finley’s colorful remark that these pelicans looked “like a squadron of white war-ships”?108

Bravo! Bully! Wow! Roosevelt loved the whole presentation. Perhaps he had discovered a new American original like the young Audubon. Clearly, Finley wasn’t a fringe ornithologist but a main voice. Once again T.R.’s famous exuberance was called forth by the incredible photographs of young burrowing owls perched on Bohlman’s lap and Finley hand-feeding double-crested cormorants at Tule Lake. There was nothing bland about Finley’s photos. Having already saved, for John Muir, the 14,162-foot Mount Shasta, which was prominent on the horizon in much of the Klamath basin area, Roosevelt wanted to solve the political problems associated with creating a huge federal bird reservation in the middle of his Reclamation Service project. This was seen by Auduboners as Pinchot’s public revenge. Finley, however, took the compromise with a certain grace, as though, having toiled so long to bring attention to the Klamath basin, he felt a distinct relief in having gotten Roosevelt to establish something big for birds.

As if in a great wave of protectionism, Roosevelt rescued more than 37 million waterbirds in Oregon. On August 8, 1908, by means of an “I So Declare It” executive order he created the Klamath Lake Reservation, consisting of 81,619 acres of lakes and marshes. (This would be only the first of six national wildlife refuges set aside in the Klamath basin.*) He wanted the habitat preserved—particularly the ten- to fifteen-foot-high tule—for the pelicans and grebes. But a serious error had also been made. The entire Klamath basin should have been declared a national park, like Crater Lake or Mesa Verde, and the Reclamation Service should have been booted out of southern Oregon once and for all. However, this didn’t happen. Spurred on by the Klamath Waters Association, the raping, dredging, and draining of the wetlands ecosystem continued. At best, the reclamation project was a product of its time. Although