Preserving the Beasts of Waste and Desolation:
By Jeremy Johnston
In the early history of wildlife management, Americans generally agreed that predators such as wolves, coyotes, and mountain lions should be killed in places like Yellowstone. Although President Theodore Roosevelt sought to curtail the slaughter of predators in Yellowstone in the early 1900s, his role in park policy is often misinterpreted, and he has been portrayed as both a hero and a villain. Roosevelt’s own writings and changing views further confuse the divergence of opinions on predator control. In his book The Wilderness Hunter, which detailed his experiences in the Dakota Badlands during the 1880s, Roosevelt referred to wolves as “the beasts of waste and desolation.”1 In this same book, Roosevelt also depicted the cougar as a “bloodthirsty” and “cowardly” predator with a “desire for bloodshed which they lack the courage to realize.”1
Yet behind his flamboyant depiction of predators as destroyers of cattle and wildlife, he was a careful student of predators and their natural behavior. As Roosevelt spent more time studying predators in their natural setting, his attitudes toward their role in nature began to change. By 1908, he ordered that predator control of Yellowstone’s cougars be stopped in order that the predator populations curtail the growing elk populations. This change in Roosevelt’s perspective toward Yellowstone’s predator population was influenced by several factors, including his goal of establishing a wildlife reserve in Yellowstone, his personal interest in hunting, and his increased understanding of the role of predators in an ecosystem.
Theodore Roosevelt’s interest in natural history began at an early age. When he was eight, young Roosevelt viewed a dead seal in a New York marketplace. “That seal filled me with every possible feeling of romance and adventure,” Roosevelt later reminisced.2 The young Roosevelt returned to the market to measure and weigh the seal. Eventually he obtained the seal’s skull to begin a natural history collection. The collection continued to grow through Roosevelt’s life.
In 1872, shortly after Congress created Yellowstone National Park, Theodore Roosevelt received a rifle and taxidermy lessons from his father for his birthday. These gifts would further his studies in natural history as well as introduce the young man to the sport of hunting. Roosevelt continued to pursue his natural history studies into his college years, when he initially pursued a degree in natural history before deciding on law as a field of study. Despite this change in career goals, Roosevelt continued to study wildlife throughout his life.
Hunting played an important role in Theodore Roosevelt’s life, not just for the collecting of natural specimens for study, but for recreational enjoyment as well. Roosevelt best summed up his feelings toward the sport of hunting in the preface to his book, The Wilderness Hunter:
In hunting, the finding and killing of the game is after all but a part of the whole. The free, self-reliant, adventurous life, with its rugged and stalwart democracy; the wild surroundings, the grand beauty of the scenery, the chance to study the ways and habits of the woodland creatures – all these unite to give the career of the wilderness hunter its peculiar charm. The chase is among the best of all national pastimes; it cultivates that vigorous manliness for the lack of which in a nation, as in an individual, the possession of no other qualities can possibly atone.3
This great interest in hunting and natural history eventually led Roosevelt into the American West. Roosevelt’s first visit to the West occurred in 1883, when Roosevelt arrived for a bison hunt in the Dakota Badlands. After successfully completing his hunt, Roosevelt invested in a cattle ranch, which marked the beginning of his close connection to the West. Roosevelt returned the following year, not only to investigate his ranching operations, but to escape the grief and hardship caused by the death of his mother and first wife, Alice. Roosevelt spent most of the following years herding cattle and experiencing a number of adventures, which included fighting against drunken assailants and capturing thieves who stole his boat. Hunting occupied a great deal of his time during these years. Roosevelt hunted a variety of animals throughout the Badlands, as well as into Wyoming and Montana. Roosevelt continued to spend a majority of his time at his ranch until the winter of 1886-1887 wiped out most of his cattle herd. In following years he occasionally returned to his ranch, using it as a base for hunting excursions and other sightseeing trips. Starting from his ranch, Roosevelt made two trips into Yellowstone National Park in the 1890s.
In 1910 Roosevelt reflected on the importance of his western experiences in the Dakota Badlands during a speech in Fargo, North Dakota. Roosevelt remarked to the audience, “I never would have been president if it had not been for my experiences here in North Dakota.”4 Throughout the remainder of his life, Roosevelt reflected on these adventures. His experiences and observations from these past trips also formed the basis for many of his wildlife management policies in Yellowstone National Park.5
Roosevelt’s interest in the American West soon focused on Yellowstone National Park and the threats to its wildlife from railroad development proposals and poaching. Roosevelt became aware of the problems facing Yellowstone in 1885 when he met with George Bird Grinnell, the editor of Forest and Stream, then the leading natural history magazine in North America. Grinnell, who first visited Yellowstone in 1875, was one of the founders of the Audubon Society. Since that first visit he led a campaign to protect Yellowstone ungulates from market hunting and commercial development.
Roosevelt’s initial meeting with Grinnell, however, was not the result of concern over the park. Roosevelt wanted Grinnell to explain some negative remarks his magazine printed in a review of Roosevelt’s first book describing his western adventures, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman. Grinnell gave the book an overall favorable review, but he noted that Roosevelt generalized his observations of wildlife and relied on some unreliable sources for information. During the meeting Grinnell defended his critique and Roosevelt accepted Grinnell’s explanation. Throughout the course of the meeting the two men realized they shared interests in hunting and the West. They became good friends.
Soon after their initial meeting, the two friends founded the Boone and Crockett Club, an organization that worked to defend Yellowstone and its wildlife. Using Forest and Stream as its vocal piece, the Boone and Crockett club decried poaching within Yellowstone and proposals for railroad developments. The club’s publicity resulted in the passage of the Lacey Act of 1894, which established Yellowstone’s first efficient judicial system. The act authorized punishing poachers for their illegal activities. The Boone and Crockett club also stopped completion of a railroad through the northern section of Yellowstone. When railroad developers wanted to decrease the boundaries of Yellowstone, publicity generated by the Boone and Crockett club created a public outcry to save Yellowstone.6
Through his efforts to save Yellowstone with Grinnell, Roosevelt began to envision the park as a sanctuary and breeding ground for wildlife. Roosevelt hoped that if the park’s wildlife were protected, their populations would dramatically increase and spread to the surrounding regions. This would ensure the continuation of hunting, his favorite pastime, in the Yellowstone ecosystem outside of the park boundaries. It would also alleviate his fear that the West, as settlement increased, would become a series of private game reserves allowing only the rich to hunt. When the “Rough Rider” became President on the death of McKinley in 1901, Roosevelt found himself in a position where he could achieve this goal. He could do it by micro-managing Yellowstone’s wildlife policies.
Roosevelt and Yellowstone Predators
President Roosevelt’s first act toward the management of Yellowstone’s predators was to insure the purchase of a pack of dogs for hunting cougars. For Roosevelt, killing cougars with the assistance of hounds in Yellowstone supported the ongoing process of killing predators within the park. Although the hunting of many ungulate species ended in 1883 by a directive of the Secretary of the Interior, park officials continued killing predators throughout the 1880s and 1890s. Many conservationists of the day, including Roosevelt, believed limiting predation would increase ungulate populations and allow them to recover from the results of the intensive market hunting that occurred in the park before the ban on hunting.7
Roosevelt’s eagerness for the purchase of a pack of hounds was also influenced by his personal desire to hunt cougars in Yellowstone. On December 17, 1901, Roosevelt wrote to Yellowstone’s acting superintendent, Major John Pitcher: “What is the practice about killing mountain lions? If I get into the Park next June I should greatly like to have a hunt after some of them – that is, on the supposition that they are ‘varmints’ and are not protected.”8 Experiencing a cougar hunt in Yellowstone also would provide Roosevelt with an opportunity for him to get reacquainted with his friend and hunting guide, John B. Goff.
Roosevelt first met Goff in January 1901, shortly after being sworn in as Vice-President. Goff guided him in Colorado on his first cougar hunt in which hounds were used. Although cougars greatly interested Roosevelt, he had seen very few of them in wild. His knowledge of the animal had come mostly from the tales of outdoorsmen he met in the Badlands.9
During his hunt with Goff, learned much about
cougars. The party killed 14 cougars during the trip. Roosevelt alone bagged
12 of them. If this sounds like senseless slaughter, it should be remembered
that in a time before high tech film and advanced scientific methods
were used to study wild animals, hunting was the only way to closely examine
available wildlife. Roosevelt’s narrative of the hunt printed in Outdoor
Pastimes of an American Hunter in 1905 was “the first reasonably
full and trustworthy life history of the cougar as regards its most essential
details.”10
Clinton Hart
Merriam, director of the Division of Biological Survey,
agreed. After receiving cougar skulls from the hunt, he wrote Roosevelt that
“your series of skulls from Colorado is incomparably the largest, most
complete, and most valuable series ever brought together from any single
locality, and will be of inestimable value in determining the amount of
individual variation.”11
From the 1901 hunt, Roosevelt gained specimens for classification and a better understanding of the predation habits of cougars. He learned about their diet by examining stomach contents, and he dispelled the myth of cougars being man-killers. This information on cougars formed the basis for Roosevelt’s decisions regarding predator control in Yellowstone.12
Roosevelt planned to return to Colorado for a second hunt with Goff, this time to hunt bears in 1903, but his plans never came to fruition. Philip B. Stewart from Colorado Springs, a close friend of Roosevelt who accompanied him on the 1901 cougar hunt, took on the task of organizing the hunt, but one obstacle after another confounded his plans. First, Goff was wounded by an over-eager tourist he was guiding on a hunt. Roosevelt expressed his frustration to Stewart in a letter, “I hope he beat the ‘tourist’ who inflicted the wound severely.”13 Goff recovered rapidly, and promised enough cougar to keep Roosevelt satisfied, but on January 22, 1903, Roosevelt wrote Stewart to cancel the hunt. “Many things are conspiring to make it unlikely that I can go,” he complained.14 Instead, Roosevelt scheduled a grand tour of the western states for the spring of 1903, with one stop at Yellowstone.
Nonetheless, Roosevelt hoped for another hunt
with
Goff. Shortly after canceling the hunt in
Colorado, Roosevelt wrote Stewart about the possibility of sending Goff from
Colorado to meet him in Yellowstone. By bringing Goff to Yellowstone,
Roosevelt would be able to meet his objectives: controlling predators within
the park and enjoying a hunt. ,“The park authorities say they would
like Johnny Goff to be up there with his dogs on trial for the business of
killing out some of the mountain lions,” Roosevelt wrote to Stewart, “then if
things went right, I might get a week with him myself.”15
But his plan began to unravel when Secretary of War Elihu Root, noted that
Roosevelt’s public image might be tarnished if he killed any animals within
the park.16
Root most likely felt that a hunt in Yellowstone National Park, where hunting
by the general public was forbidden, would appear to be self-serving, and no
less than a misuse of presidential authority. If the public got wind of
Roosevelt ordering his hunting guide into Yellowstone, it could create a minor
scandal.
Roosevelt attempted to resolve the issue by writing Major John Pitcher: “Secretary Root is afraid that a false impression might get out if I killed anything in the Park, even though it was killed, as of course would be the case, strictly under Park regulations . . . Now I have thought of this: Would it be possible, starting from within the Park, to go just outside the border and kill any mountain lions?”17 Roosevelt then requested Pitcher send out scouts to find a suitable area. He concluded the letter by asking if he had requested any hounds for the purpose of killing predators.18 If Goff could not reach Yellowstone for some reason, Roosevelt could still hunt cougars by using the government’s pack of dogs outside of the park boundaries. Pitcher’s response is not known, but it appears he did submit an application for three hounds. Roosevelt ordered the Secretary of the Interior, Ethan Hitchcock, to send Pitcher an additional three dogs to supplement the pack. On March 2, Roosevelt ordered Pitcher to put the dogs through a trial run. “We must be dead sure we get our mountain lion,” Roosevelt wrote.19
Pitcher wrote a report to the
President on the hunting possibilities. Pitcher noted his scouts located “the
fresh tracks of ten mountain lions, close to the point where we propose to
make our camp.”20
He also mentioned that the park’s buffalo keeper, C. J. “Buffalo” Jones, had captured a live lion
while feeding some bighorn sheep in the area. Pitcher reported that the dogs
would soon arrive in the park from Texas, and that kennels awaited them.
Perhaps trying to alleviate the President’s fears about public opinion,
Pitcher wrote, “Now these lions have simply got to be thinned out, and if you
will lend us a hand in the matter, you will be of great help to us, and
no one can offer any reasonable objection to your doing so.”21
Roosevelt eagerly anticipated his trip to Yellowstone, with a side-trip outside the park to kill some cougars. His plans took another turn on March 21, when Pitcher informed the President that only four of the eight dogs had arrived and they were untrained. Buffalo Jones was attempting to train them using his captured cougar. Pitcher also noted that he had telegraphed Mr. Poole, the dog supplier, and informed him that he needed the other four dogs, two of which must be trained or else the contract would be voided. Poole telegraphed back that four more dogs were being shipped to the park. Pitcher requested John Goff’s address in order to contact him if the four new dogs were unsuitable.22
When he learned of the problem with the dogs, Roosevelt wrote back to Pitcher canceling the hunt. “Having had experience in the past with individuals who sold hounds, I am not in the least surprised at your news.”23 Roosevelt commented, “an untrained hound is worse than useless. Such a pack will run deer or elk in the place of lion, and will be a perfect curse to the Park.”24 Roosevelt also noted that bringing Goff up to the park would be unacceptable. “The more I have thought it over… [Goff] coming up would cause a great deal of talk.”25 He concluded that seeing the game of the park would be exciting enough but that, on the off-chance the hounds were trained in time, he would attempt to hunt cougar. 26
On April 8, 1903, Theodore Roosevelt arrived in Yellowstone National Park for his long anticipated visit. Famed naturalist and writer John Burroughs accompanied Roosevelt during his visit. During the two-week trip, Roosevelt and Burroughs spent most of their time studying the park’s wildlife. Roosevelt only fired one shot within the park. Using a tree for a target, Roosevelt tested a new revolver, only to have the spent shell fly back, cutting his cheek. The only animal Roosevelt killed during his trip was one mouse. With hopes of discovering a new species of mice, Roosevelt caught his prey by throwing his hat over the mouse to entrap the small creature. He spent the evening skinning the mouse and treating the small pelt for shipment to the U. S. Biological Survey to see if it was a new species. Unfortunately, the mouse was not a new species, but it was one unknown to the park area. John Burroughs worried newspapers might misprint the word “mouse” in their articles with “moose” and create a controversy for the President.27
Roosevelt’s preparations for a cougar hunt did come back to haunt him during his visit. Buffalo Jones decided to take maters into his own hands by bringing the government’s pack of hounds to the presidential camp for a quick cougar hunt. Upon Jones’ arrival at the camp, Roosevelt instructed Pitcher to order Jones and the hounds back to Mammoth Hot Springs. John W. Meldrum, the judge of Yellowstone’s court who tried to warn Jones not to bother the President, later recalled “I met [Jones] down at the Post Office shortly after he came in and said, ‘Hello Jones, I thought you were out with the President[?]’ Jones was so mad that he never said a word.”28
During the President’s visit in April of 1903,
he had substantial time to study Yellowstone’s wildlife. His perspective on
predators began to change, especially after he witnessed the conditions of the
elk herds. He viewed many elk along the way to his campsite on the Yellowstone
River near the
Black Canyon of the Yellowstone. He noted that
elk “were certainly more numerous than when I was last through the Park twelve
years before.”29
With the help of Pitcher and their guide Elwood Hoffer, who also guided
Roosevelt during his 1891 visit to the Yellowstone area, Roosevelt counted
3,000 head of elk in one sitting. He also noticed many elk carcasses lying on
the ground. He paid close attention to what had caused their deaths. Two were
killed by “scab” and some were killed by cougars, but most had died of
starvation—the result, Roosevelt believed, of an excessive elk
population. Roosevelt assumed the numbers to be too high on the basis of
what he witnessed during his visits in 1890 and 1891. Certainly the elk
numbers would have increased throughout the 1890s due to the ending of market
hunting within Yellowstone and increased power to prosecute poachers under the
Lacey Act. In addition to decreased hunting, the destruction of the
wolves and other natural predators in this time period would have decreased
the predation of the elk herds allowing for a greater increase in elk numbers.
Roosevelt now began to defend the cougars’
presence in the park:, “As the elk were evidently rather too numerous
for the feed,” he later wrote in the account of his trip, “I do not think the
cougars were doing any damage.”30
Roosevelt worried that the elk herds would meet the same fate as his North
Dakota cattle herds had in the disastrous winter of 1886-1887. Roosevelt
feared the elk would deplete the range, leaving little if any winter feed, and
this would lead to starvation for themselves and other wildlife. To prevent
this from occurring, Roosevelt thought the elk herds needed to be thinned
down. He believed that predators were needed to fulfill this function in
replacement of human hunters who were now banned from hunting in Yellowstone.
Roosevelt now realized that predators, such as cougars were an important part
of the Yellowstone ecosystem. This was a rare opinion for the time
period, especially from a former western rancher. Unfortunately, Roosevelt
failed to see the winter die-offs as effective elk population control.
Instead, from his background in
range management, he focused on establishing a
balance between elk numbers and what he considered to be efficient feed on the
range.
Although Roosevelt now wrongly believed that
cougars alone could keep down the elk numbers, he still feared that cougar
predation would destroy other big game populations such as deer and bighorn
sheep. In his view, coyotes and wolves were not as dangerous to the ungulate
herds. Wolves would have been very low in numbers to have too much of an
impact on the ungulate herds and Roosevelt dismissed coyotes as a formidable
predator. “Although there are plenty of coyotes in the Park, there are
no big wolves,” he noted, “and save for very infrequent poachers the only
enemy of ... all game, is the cougar.”31
Using this belief as a basis, Roosevelt began to advocate a limited predator
control program for the cougar population. Major Pitcher assigned Buffalo
Jones the responsibility for controlling cougars with the government’s new
hounds; however, Jones soon ran into a conflict with park military
officials and resigned his position. When notified of Jones’
resignation, Roosevelt knew just the man for the job—his former
hunting guide, John B.
Goff.
In the spring of 1905, during a bear hunt with Goff, Roosevelt wrote to Major Pitcher; A.A. Anderson, the Yellowstone Forest Reserve inspector; and Ethan A. Hitchcock, Secretary of the Interior, requesting that Goff be “given all the privileges that can be given for killing lion within or without the park.”32 Goff left for Yellowstone in June, expecting the job of thinning out the Yellowstone cougar population to take four years.33
Roosevelt’s instructions to Goff indicated his newly selective approach to predator control. “Of course you can not afford to let the cougar exist in the neighborhood of where the deer and sheep are,” Roosevelt wrote Goff in May, 1906, “but any cougar that are found off where there are practically nothing but elk, I should think it a good plan to leave them alone.”34 Unfortunately, Roosevelt failed to realize that Yellowstone’s cougar population, after years of steady hunting, had already been nearly exterminated. Goff’s son Byron later recalled, “Roosevelt was misinformed about the lion situation.”35 John Goff soon discovered that few cougars existed in the park, and he resigned after less than a year of service.
Shortly before Goff left the park, Roosevelt began to realize that the cougar population had become dangerously low. After receiving a letter from Goff, Roosevelt responded, “I am sorry to hear about the elk having had such a bad winter, but just as I have said, there are so many elk that they have begun to be too plentiful in the park, and personally I should be sorry to see all the cougar killed off.”36 These fears regarding the rising elk populations and the loss of predator populations caused Roosevelt to reverse his predator control policies against the cougar populations. In a 1908 letter to Superintendent S. B. M. Young, Major Pitcher’s replacement, Roosevelt ordered an end to the killing of cougars in the park:
I do not think any more cougars should be killed in the park. Game is abundant. We want to profit by what has happened in the English preserves, where it proved to be bad for the grouse itself to kill off all the peregrine falcons and all the other birds of prey. It may be advisable, in case the ranks of the deer and antelope right around the Springs should be too heavily killed out, to kill some cougars there, but in the rest of the park I certainly would not kill any of them. On the contrary, they ought to be let alone.37
Although hundreds of coyotes continued to be killed while Roosevelt was in office, cougars were left alone in Yellowstone after his directive was received. The pack of dogs purchased by the government under Roosevelt’s directions was sold. The official killing of cougars did not resume until 1914, when 14 cougars were killed. After the National Park Service assumed control over Yellowstone National Park, cougars were again killed: four were killed in 1916; thirty-four were killed in 1918 and 1919. The last reported official killing of a cougar in Yellowstone occurred in 1925. 38
Roosevelt left the Presidency in 1909, but his attention focused on Yellowstone again in 1912. In an article to Outlook magazine, Roosevelt publicly voiced his concern over the increasing number of elk in the park. He had previously expressed worry regarding park’s elk numbers, but now he feared that the problem would result in disaster. Roosevelt predicted:
Elk are hardy animals and prolific. It is probable that a herd under favorable conditions in its own habitat will double in numbers about every four years. There are now in the Yellowstone Park probably 30,000 elk. A very few moments’ thought ought to show any one that under these circumstances, if nothing interfered to check the increase, elk would be as plentiful as cattle throughout the whole United States inside half a century. But their possible range is of course strictly limited, and as there are no foes to kill them down, the necessary death-rate is kept up by nature in far more cruel way – that is starvation by winter. The suffering and misery that this means is quite heartrending. . . What is needed is recognition of the simple fact that the elk will always multiply beyond their means of subsistence, and if their numbers are not reduced in some other way they will be reduced by starvation and disease.39
The only solution, Roosevelt decided, was that “it would be infinitely better for the elk, infinitely less cruel, if some method could be devised by which hunting them should be permitted right up to the point of killing each year on an average what would amount to the whole animal increase…Of course the regulation should be so strict and intelligent as to enable all killing to be stopped the moment it was found to be in any way excessive or detrimental.”40
Roosevelt’s proposal for controlling the numbers of elk in Yellowstone by limited hunting faced numerous obstacles. It was hard to convince the public and the military administrators in Yellowstone that the elk herds should be culled. Park administrators did attempt to solve the problem by increasing the feeding of hay to elk, decreasing domestic grazing in the National Forest Reserves, and by shipping elk outside the park, but this was not effective in Roosevelt’s opinion.41 Roosevelt criticized these methods, “from time to time well-meaning people propose that the difficulty shall be met by feeding the elk hay in winter or by increasing the size of the winter grounds... But as a permanent way of meeting the difficulty neither enlarging the range nor feeding with hay would be of the slightest use. All that either method could accomplish would be to remove the difficulty for two or three years until the elk had time to multiply beyond once more to the danger-point.”42
Misleading publicity regarding the elk die-off in the winter of 1916-1917 seemed to confirm Roosevelt’s worst fears. This news led many people to believe the winter killed off most of the elk population. Heavy snowfall kept the elk herds from traveling to their winter range. Many elk died from starvation, which many preservationists took as proof that overpopulation was threatening the future of the elk. Some people became alarmed that the species was again headed for extinction. Most of this fear was based on exaggerated counts from previous years, but the park’s new administration, the National Park Service, responded by continuing the policy of feeding hay to the elk. Roosevelt felt this would only continue to compound the problem by once again raising the elk population to uncontrollable standards.43 Predator control of wolves and coyotes continued as the newly established National Park Service assumed the management of Yellowstone National Park. The new managers also targeted the cougar populations once again. In 1916, four cougars, 180 coyotes, and 14 wolves were killed. The following year, 100 coyotes and 36 wolves were killed. In 1918, 23 cougars, 190 coyotes, and 36 wolves were killed.44
In 1918, Roosevelt wrote to his friend George Bird Grinnell to express his concerns for the future of Yellowstone:
The simple fact is that if we got additional winter grazing grounds for the elk, or fed them alfalfa, in four years they would have multiplied beyond the limit again, and we should be faced by exactly the same difficulty that we are now. There is winter ground for a few thousand elk in the park but not much more than a fraction of the present number. As their natural enemies have been removed their numbers must be kept down by disease or starvation or else by shooting. It is a mere question of mathematics to show that if protected as they have been in the park they would, inside of a century, fill the whole United States; so that they would then die of starvation!45
The next year, the National Park Service killed eleven more cougars, 227 coyotes, and six wolves. Predator control continued to remove what “natural enemies” of the elk were left. National Park Service founder Horace Albright later described the reason for this policy “the rangers have grown to love all wild life except those predatory species which they so often observe destroying young antelope, deer, or elk. Aside from those outlawed animals, a national park ranger is never known to kill a native animal or bird of the park, or to express a desire to kill.”46 Roosevelt’s points about elk numbers and the role of predators continued to be debated by the National Park Service through the 20th century. Eventually the National Park Service used controlled hunting of the elk herds, but due to bad publicity and evolving scientific methods, the NPS ended the practice in the 1960s. Attitudes also changed toward Yellowstone’s predators. Many scientists began to realize the important role of wolves, coyotes, and cougars in the Yellowstone ecosystem. In 1935, the National Park Service ended predator control.47
In 1919, Roosevelt died at his home at
Sagamore Hill, New York. With his death,
Yellowstone lost not only one of its most important defenders, but also one of
its early wildlife managers. Historians continue to debate whether Roosevelt’s
handling of predators in Yellowstone was good or bad. Yet one thing is clear:,
Roosevelt attempted to establish policies that he believed were in the park’s
best interest as he understood it at the time.
Unfortunately, he failed to grasp many of the environmental changes that were
occurring in Yellowstone during his lifetime. He failed to recognize how
drastically the environment had been changed by those before him, especially
how much damage had been done to the predator populations. He also failed to
recognize that the large increase in elk populations and the effects of winter
kills were a part of natural processes in Yellowstone’s ecosystem. Despite
these failures, Roosevelt’s changes to Yellowstone’s predator control policies
were fairly advanced for his day and age. Roosevelt must be given
credit for his effort to look beyond the image of predators as “beasts of
waste and desolation” to critically examining their valuable role in the
Yellowstone ecosystem.
1 Theodore Roosevelt, The Works of Theodore Roosevelt , edited by Herman Hagedorn volume II (N. Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1927), 305. (Hereafter cited as TR Works)
1 Ibid., 272.
3 TR Works, Volume XX p. 16.
4 TR Works, Volume II, p. xxix.
5 James F. Vivian, The Romance of My Life: Theodore Roosevelt’s Speeches in Dakota. (Fargo: Prairie House, 1989), 62.
6 Books regarding Theodore Roosevelt’s early life include Paul Russell Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt: The Making of a Conservationist, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985); David McCullough, Mornings on Horseback, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981); Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, (New York: Ballantine Books, 1979).
7 George Bird Grinnell, Introduction to volume I, TR Works. For an early history of the Boone and Crockett Club see John F. Reiger, American Sportsmen and the Origins of Conservation, revised edition (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986).
9 Theodore Roosevelt to John Pitcher, December 17, 1902, Theodore Roosevelt Papers (Washington D.C.: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, 1969) (Hereafter cited as TR Papers).
10. TR Works, Volume II, pg. 265-274.
11 TR Works, Volume V, pg. 390-391.
11 C. H. Merriam to TR, May 3, 1901. TR Papers.
13 TR Works, Volume II, pp. 393-444.
13 TR to P.B. Stewart, October 13, 1902. TR papers.
14 TR to P.B. Stewart, January 22, 1903. TR papers.
15 TR to P.B. Stewart, January 26, 1903. TR papers.
17 TR to J. Pitcher, February 18, 1903. TR Papers.
18 TR to J. Pitcher, February 18, 1903.
19 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
21 J. Pitcher to TR, March 2, 1903. TR Papers.
22 J. Pitcher to TR, March 21, 1903. TR papers.
23 TR to J. Pitcher, March 26, 1903. TR papers.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
28 John Burroughs, Camping and Tramping with Roosevelt, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1907), Doris Whithorn, Twice Told on the Upper Yellowstone, volume 1, (Livingston: Doris Whithorn, 1994), and TR Works, Volume III, pp. 85-107.
29 Interview of John W. Meldrum by Newell F. Joyner, August 16, 1930. Yellowstone Research Library, C. J. Jones subject folder.
29 TR Works, Volume III, p. 95.
30 Ibid., 97.
32 TR Works, Volume III, pp. 90-91.
32 TR to J. Pitcher, May 6, 1905. TR papers.
33 The Meeker Herald, June 3, 1905. Courtesy of the White River Museum.
34 TR to J. Goff, May 2, 1906. TR papers.
35 The Cody Enterprise, July 20, 1961.
37 TR to S.B.M. Young, January 22, 1908. TR papers.
38 Aubrey L. Haines, The Yellowstone Story, vol. 2 (Boulder, Colorado: University of Colorado Press, 1977), 82.; Adolph Murie, Ecology of the Coyote in the Yellowstone, (Washington D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1940), 15; and Paul Schullery and Lee Whittlesey, “Greater Yellowstone Carnivores: A History of Changing Attitudes,” Carnivores in Ecosystems: The Yellowstone Experience, edited by Tim W. Clark, A. Peyton Curlee, Steven C. Minta, and Peter M. Kareiva, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).
39 TR Works, volume 12, pp. 379-380.
40 Ibid., p. 381.
41 Haines, The Yellowstone Story, volume 2, pp. 77-79.
43 TR Works, Volume XII, p. 381.
43 Haines, The Yellowstone Story, volume 2, pg. 79.
45 Murie, Ecology of the Coyote, 15.
46 TR to George Bird Grinnell, April 17, 1918. TR Papers.
47 Horace M. Albright and Frank J. Taylor, Oh, Ranger!, (Stanford University Press, 1928), 15. This quote was deleted from later editions of this book, probably due to the ending of predator control policies in 1935.
48 Paul Schullery, Searching for Yellowstone and James Pritchard, Preserving Yellowstone’s Natural Conditions: Science and the Perception of Nature, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).
The author, a native of Powell, Wyoming, teaches the history of Wyoming and the American West at Northwest College, Powell. A descendant of John Goff, wolf hunter in the article, Johnston holds the M.A. in history from the University of Wyoming. He wishes to thank Lee Whittlesey and Paul Schullery for their assistance in his research for this article. The article first appeared in Yellowstone Science (Spring 2002)