Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American History

One of the ranchers who watched the blizzard of 1887 wipe out his herd of cattle was Theodore Roosevelt. In the early 1880s, Roosevelt, a New Yorker, built a ranch in North Dakota's Badlands, stocked it with animals, and hired two cowboys to oversee his venture. In the spring of 1887, he headed west to check on the status of his 85,000-dollar investment, arriving in the Little Missouri valley only to find that death had beaten him there. He saw cattle carcasses—23 in just a single little spot—and found his once glorious herd reduced to just “a skinny sorry-looking crew.” The ground itself was in no better shape. “The land was a mere barren waste; not a green thing could be seen; the dead grass eaten off till the country looked as if it had been shaved with a razor.” ¹

In the fall of 1887, Roosevelt returned once again to the Badlands, this time on a hunting trip. Not much had improved since his last visit. The region's prairie grass had lost the battle with ranchers, ever eager to stock the range with more animals than it could reasonably have been expected to bear. The remaining grass fell victim to desperate cattle seeking whatever little forage they could find in the wake of the death-dealing blizzard of 1887. An eerie silence spread out over the land. Four years earlier, on a visit to this spot, Roosevelt found few, if any, buffalo. In 1885, he lamented the loss of wild sheep and antelope. In 1886, he worried about the disappearance of migratory birds. By 1887, then, the Badlands must have offered a melancholy sight, and Roosevelt proposed to do something about it. He returned to New York to invite 12 of his animal-loving friends over for a meal and in January 1888 they established the Boone & Crockett Club, named in honor of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, legendary frontiersmen whom Roosevelt worshipped. The club was one of the first organizations in this country dedicated to saving big-game animals. And it was the work of a man who would go on to become president of the United States, a man whose name has become synonymous with the American conservation movement. ²

The story generally told about conservation goes something like this. President Roosevelt, an avid outdoor enthusiast, believed the government needed to intervene to save the nation's forests, streams, and other natural resources from rapacious loggers, ranchers, and market hunters alike. To carry out this mission, Roosevelt named Gifford Pinchot to head the newly formed U.S. Forest Service in 1905. Pinchot and his colleagues in the conservation movement, many drawn from fields such as forestry, geology, and hydrology, felt that a rational plan for organizing the nation's use of its natural resources was in order. Business leaders,

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