• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 4129 0

Natalie Naylor). In October 2002, John and I, along with Barbara Berryman Brandt, cochaired another T.R. conference (“The Big Stick and the Square Deal”) at Canisius College in Buffalo. At both of these meetings, I lectured on T.R. and the environment. Following the Buffalo event—which featured biographers Edmund Morris, Kathleen Dalton, Candice Millard, Patricia O’Toole, and H. W. Brands—John encouraged me to write a definitive book on T.R. as our naturalist president. As an incentive, John put together the first comprehensive list of all the parks, forests, monuments, and bird reservations Roosevelt had saved. Gilding the lily, he opened up previously closed T.R. papers for me to use, including illuminating new material on Robert B. Roosevelt. Unfortunately, John died of cancer in 2005. He was only sixty-two years old. This book was written—in part—for him.

Tweed Roosevelt likewise encouraged me to write about his great-grandfather’s conservationist legacy. Tweed’s article “Theodore Roosevelt: The Mystery of the Unrecorded Environmentalist” (published in a 2002 issue of Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal) considered the notion that the creation of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was Roosevelt’s great institutional accomplishment. Often misunderstood by a public enamored with “scenic wonders” such as the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife rangers and biologists (Rachel Carson was one) protect more than 280 different endangered species and their habitats in 550 national wildlife refuges. Every day, these men and women serve as Theodore Roosevelt’s environmental foot soldiers. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife archive in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, is a treasure trove. If I ever execute my planned America in the Age of Conservation quartet—with The Wilderness Warrior serving as the first volume—Shepherdstown will surely become my new Medora.

Throughout the writing process I had five guardian angels: Paul Tritaik of Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge; Mark Madison, historian of U.S. Fish and Wildlife in Shepherdstown; Lowell Baier, president of the Boone and Crockett Club; Professor John Reiger of Ohio University-Chillicothe, the leading scholar on George Bird Grinnell; and Robert M. Utley, former chief historian of the National Park Service. They carefully read chapters and offered their expertise.

After I finished the first draft of the manuscript, I asked numerous specialists and friends to comment on chapters. My honor roll includes the following experts: Donald Worster of the University of Kansas; Doris Kearns Goodwin of Concord, Massachusetts; David Dary of the University of Oklahoma; Paul Schullery of Yellowstone National Park; Chris Darimont of the University of California-Santa Cruz; Mike Grunwald of TIME; Wendell Swank of the Boone and Crockett Club; Stephen Mark of Crater Lake National Park; Dorothy FireCloud and Hugh Hawthorne of Devils Tower National Monument; Harvey Leake, historian to the Whetherill family; Tom Farrell of Wind Cave National Park; Jeff Rupert of Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge; Bruce Noble of the Chickasaw National Recreation Area; Debbie Baroff at the Museum of the Great Plains, Lawton, Oklahoma; Elizabeth Sims and Leslie Klinger of the Biltmore Estate, Asheville, North Carolina; John Flicker, president of the National Audubon Society; Edward Renehan, Jr., author of John Burroughs: An American Naturalist; Joan Burroughs, granddaughter of the legendary naturalist; Bob Edwards of the Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum, Buffalo, Wyoming; Martha Resk of the Audubon House, Key West, Florida; Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post; Michael Tuerkay of the Senckenberg Research Institute, Germany; Denise Pope of Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas; Stephen L. Zawistowski and Alison Zaccone of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; Susan Blair of the National Geographic Society; Mike Gipple of the Mahaska County Conservation Board in Iowa; Patrick Sharp of California State University–Los Angeles; Minor Ferris Buchanan of Jackson, Mississippi;