Since all the fuss over President Clinton's designation of the Grand Staircase of the Escalante, many references have been made to Theodore Roosevelt, our one truly conservationist president. Although Thomas Jefferson demonstrated an equally clear love of natural history, it was Roosevelt who accomplished the most in preserving nature and protecting wildlife.
At the time Roosevelt became president in 1901, there were five national parks in the United States - Yellowstone, Yosemite, Sequoia, General Grant and Mt. Ranier. Five more were added during Roosevelt's presidency - Oregon's Crater Lake, Oklahoma's Platt National Park, South Dakota's Windy Cave Park, North Dakota's Sully Hill Park and Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park.When he laid the cornerstone of the gateway to Yellowstone Park, he pronounced Yellowstone unique. "Nowhere else in any civilized country is there to be found such a tract of veritable wonderland made accessible to all visitors, where at the same time not only the scenery of the wilderness, but the wild creatures of the Park are scrupulously preserved . . . The creation and preservation of such a great natural playground in the interest of our people as a whole is a credit to the nation."
With Roosevelt's encouragement, Congress passed a key measure in preservation of national parks on June 8, 1906 - the Antiquities or National Monuments Act. It was intended to take political partisanship out of the process of protecting and preserving national lands.
It authorized the president of the United States, at his discretion, "to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic and scientific interest that are situated upon lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be National Monuments."
Roosevelt was so committed to this act that in the three years left of his presidency he established 18 national monuments, all of them in the Western United States. One of them, Natural Bridges Monument, was created in Utah, April 16, 1908; and another, justly the most famous, was Grand Canyon, Arizona, created January 11, 1908.
When President Clinton recently used the backdrop of the Grand Canyon to declare a national monument in Utah, he recalled two hours he had spent in 1971 on a rock in the Grand Canyon "all alone," where he watched the sunset and saw "the colors change layer after layer."
Roosevelt's feelings about the "absolutely unparalleled natural wonder" of the Grand Canyon were similar. In 1903, he made a heartfelt request that unfortunately has not been honored.
"I want to ask you to do one thing . . . to keep this great wonder of nature as it is. I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel, or anything else to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon. You can not improve it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it."
By the time Roosevelt left office in March 1909, the national forest system had been enlarged to 148 million acres. Today, there are almost 200 million acres, spreading over the mountain slopes and river valleys of the West - and they are still the center of controversy.
However controversial, they represent a testament to Roosevelt's commitment to conservation, which he said "means the wise use of the earth and its resources for the lasting good of men. Conservation is the foresighted utilization, preservation, and/or renewal of forests, waters, lands, and minerals for the greatest good of the greatest number for the longest time."