Bob Mount: Teddy Roosevelt—avid hunter who loved birds

Following are paraphrased excerpts from a book soon to be published. The author is Douglas Brinkley, who wrote an article in the May issue of the magazine Vanity Fair.

A president of the U.S. arrived at the White House on a wintry morning for a Cabinet meeting “with fire in his eyes.” Three Republican presidents had been assassinated during the members’ lifetimes and upon seeing the agitated president, they were braced for bad news.

“Just now,” exclaimed the president,  “I saw a chestnut-sided warbler … and this is only February!”

This president was Theodore Roosevelt, a bird lover. At the time, it was fashionable among upper-class women to wear hats adorned with the plumage of egrets and other wading birds. By 1903, five million birds were slaughtered annually to satisfy the millinery trade, many from government owned Pelican Island in Florida. Immediately after a meeting with concerned citizens and hearing descriptions of the plume-hunters’ “bloody toll,” Roosevelt, on March 14, 1903, declared Pelican Island a Federal Bird Reservation, making it the first of 550 sites now designated national Wildlife Refuges encompassing more than 150 million acres.

Roosevelt took steps necessary to protect the Grand Canyon and other national treasures. Altogether between 1901 and 1909, more than 230 million acres would be set aside for posterity by Roosevelt.

Despite his record as being the strongest conservation advocate of any U.S. president, before or since, he had what some would consider a flaw, a penchant for hunting large wild animals, including cougars and jaguars. The article depicts Roosevelt kneeling next to a jaguar he’d killed in Brazil and of him standing triumphantly behind a dead African rhinoceros.

Roosevelt became close friends with John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club. On an exploratory trip together, they set up camp in a grove of giant redwoods. According to Brinkley, Roosevelt began telling Muir about his hunting escapades. Muir asked, “Mr. Roosevelt, when are you going to get beyond this boyishness of killing things? Are you not getting far enough along to leave that off?” After a moment’s pause, Roosevelt replied, “Muir, I guess you are right.”

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I doubt that any of the animals Roosevelt hunted during his era were declining in number, and if they were he surely was unaware they were. Which leads me to comment on the subject of wolf killing. Alaska governor Sarah Palin is currently the most notorious wolf-killer and wolf-killing advocate. Gov. Palin encourages aerial hunting of wolves, which has resulted in a wolf body count of 600 in the current season (Defenders, Spring 2009 ed.) She approves of wildlife officials killing the wolf puppies, in or near their dens, after their mother was killed. She advocates paying a $150 bounty to wolf-killers, with proof being provided by a severed leg. Almost leads one to believe she is the adult reincarnation of Little Red Riding Hood.

Recently, the Northern Rocky Mountain population suffered a setback. In one of his last proclamations before leaving office, former President Bush lifted the ban on killing wolves in the Northern Rockies. After assuming office Pres. Obama immediately reinstating the ban. He appointed Ken Salazar Secretary of the Interior, who shocked conservationists by removing federal protection of wolves in Montana and Idaho. Does the right hand know what the left hand’s doing? Hmm …

Bob Mount is emeritus professor of zoology and entomology at Auburn University and writes a weekly column for the Opelika-Auburn News.