The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (118 page)

Job began doing advance work for this possible trip. Traveling southward, he gathered data for Roosevelt about tarpon and other game fish, the migration of bay birds, and the egg-laying of sea turtles. This scouting also afforded Job the opportunity to befriend Warden Sprinkle, whom he affectionately called “protector of the Gulf birds.” As an assignment for
Outing Magazine
in 1907, Job wrote “Curiosities of Louisiana Sea Islands,” an article that Roosevelt loved. Job was announcing to the world that his beloved Theodore Roosevelt—the ornithologist president—was heroically protecting America’s flyways from unwelcome human encroachment.
¹¹

According to the Biological Survey’s
Annual Report of 1908
, Roosevelt didn’t create Tern Island, Shell Keys, and East Timbalier Island at random. He was concerned about effluence from the mouth of the Mississippi River. Besides birds, marine life filled Tern Island, Shell Keys, and East Timbalier. Single-cell animals, jellyfish, and copepods were omnipresent. Billions of types of plankton—many still not identified by scientists—kept the food chain thriving. As a bonus, a perceptive beachcomber on these Louisiana islands could discover amazing rocks, fossils, shells, coral, and bones. A botanist could marvel at bayberry or wax myrtle. The currents and undertows around these outer islands, however, made them treacherous for the seafaring novice. With just the slightest change in weather a breaker, like a small waterfall, could rush up on the unsuspecting novice’s vessel and swamp it. In June 1915, as ex-president, Roosevelt visited these isolated barrier islands with both Job and Sprinkle as companions.

II

From the Louisiana islands Roosevelt, for the first time, moved west of the Mississippi River with his idea of federal bird reservations. Under the instructive guidance of Job, Chapman, and Dutcher, Roosevelt matter-of-factly developed a bold Oregon-Washington strategy for the Biological Survey to implement with environmental interconnectedness in mind. And there was one inflexible rule: once the Roosevelt administration created a federal reservation, it didn’t tolerate plumers, seal hunters, or human menaces of any other kind. The refuges were official U.S. government property policed by wardens paid by the Audubon Societies and AOU (with money from the Thayer Fund). Recognizing that America’s coastal areas were under siege from the millinery, fishing, and oil lobbies (and anxious to continue to add new rookeries to his conservationist program), Roosevelt established three more federal bird reservations along the Pacific coast in Washington state on October 23, 1907—Flattery Rocks, just off the coast from the town of Ozette; Copalis Rock, an island cluster of bluish sandy clay; and Quillayute Needles, known for its natural sandstone pillars and barking seals. The wildlife was so noisy at these Pacific sites that even the rocks seemed to talk. John Muir had been right in
Steep Trails
. Washington state was, to put it mildly, “strikingly varied in natural features.”
¹²

When considering these Pacific Northwest refuges, it’s important the reader keep in mind that their preservation received little attention from the general public or the press in 1907. It’s probably safe to say that 95 percent of Americans had never heard of the Biological Survey, and 99.9 percent had never read a word about Job’s bird rookeries. But the Biological Survey and Job were on the front line of the bird protection movement. And from 1885 to 1905 the Biological Survey issued twenty-three separate monographs on North American fauna—though how many were read was another question.
¹³

Modernity, in general, didn’t work in harmony with the Biological Survey’s concern for saving bird flocks and faunal habitats. Forests were being destroyed by logging, depriving birds of essential habitats. An ugly ramification of the telegraph and telephone lines crisscrossing North America was that birds died en masse by flying directly into them. Ernest Harold Baynes—a popular figure in buffalo preservation circles since the successful creation of Oklahoma’s Wichita Mountains reserve—wrote in
Wild Bird Guests
that the new Statue of Liberty in New York harbor was a bird trap, killing 1,400 on a single morning.
¹⁴
Skyscrapers, in general,
were deplored by the Audubon Society. This fear of overindustrialization, long articulated by Burroughs, convinced Roosevelt that he should establish a coordinated system of bird refuges from the Pacific Northwest to the prairie in North Dakota, and from the upper reaches of Lake Huron to the coral reefs of the Florida Keys. Starting in 1903 (with Pelican Island), every year the USDA’s Biological Survey issued an annual report, in which bird reservations established for aesthetic reasons were given noticeably more space than animal control. Wildlife protection had taken hold in the Biological Survey in a way that would have been unthinkable before Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency.
¹⁵
According to Aldo Leopold, in
Game Management
, because of the “Roosevelt Doctrine” of conservation, the “game hog” and the “market hunter” were “duly pilloried in the press and banquet hall, and to some extent in field and wood, but the game supply continued to wane.”
¹⁶

Besides poachers, plumers, and eggers the first federal bird reservations along coastal areas—bird cities—had to confront the hazard of bad weather. Even a warden with a shiny USDA badge was no deterrent to winds of 130 or 140 miles per hour. The Biological Survey’s annual report for 1907, for example, told of nonhuman difficulties the USDA had at Breton Island in Louisiana. “The islands composing this reservation were visited and somewhat damaged by a severe tropical hurricane which swept the Gulf of Mexico in 1906,” the report noted glumly. “Breton Island, six miles in length, was split into three parts, and although normally standing twelve feet above water was flooded throughout its whole extent. Many thousands of pelicans were destroyed by being dashed to the ground by the wind. A beneficial feature of the storm, however, was the extermination of the raccoons and muskrats, which had infested the island and which annually wrought considerable havoc among the nesting birds.”
¹⁷

Roosevelt’s passionate interest in saving the birds of coastal Washington and Oregon grew out of his trip to Portland, Oregon, and Puget Sound, Washington, in 1903. Not only did plumers want to kill birds, but oil companies wanted to kill seals for heating fuel oil. William Finley began using the model law established by the Lacey Act as a means to prevent the killing of both birds and seals on offshore rocks. Confident, committed, and filled with an enormous sense of purpose, Finley organized the Oregon Audubon Society (today’s Portland Audubon Society) using the slogan “Woods, Water, and Wildlife,” at around the time of Roosevelt’s “great loop” tour of 1903. All Finley talked about with T.R. was Three Arch Rocks, off the Oregon shore: how the tides slapped and receded with
eternal ferocity (just as Job had described a New Brunswick rookery in
Wild Wings
). Marine life, Finley told Roosevelt, occupied every niche and crevice of these rock mounds. At night, with waves crashing, small ghost crabs wandered about, looking like aliens from outer space. And murres congregated there as nowhere else in America. These unsurveyed Pacific mounds—located only 350 yards from the southern trip of a cape
¹⁸
—also teemed with tufted puffins and seals. The mounds ranged in height from 275 to 304 feet. These offshore rookeries were being patrolled, though only haphazardly, by “citizen bird” activists in the state.
¹⁹

The activists in Oregon needed the White House to get involved and establish permanent federal protection. Feeling the burden of responsibility on his shoulders, Finley became a lobbyist. “Finley’s contribution to environmental awareness can be equated to that of only one other naturalist who was on the scene in the west during those early years,” Roger Tory Peterson wrote—“John Muir.”
²⁰
After the 1904 presidential election, Finley began sending Roosevelt private photos of the carnage among wildlife in his state. As the most noted Pacific coast wildlife photographer, Finley took seriously all living creatures that colonized the shore and outer rocks. He was, for the west coast, like Herbert K. Job and Frank M. Chapman combined—with constant help from his wife, Eileen, and Hermann Bohlman. Roosevelt was enraptured by Finley’s images. Whenever possible he talked about the Finleys and Bohlman.

Unfortunately for American environmental history, there are only superficial, potted biographies of Finley available. But we know that Finley took up Roosevelt’s invitation to visit the White House. The pictures Finley showed Roosevelt as an inducement for preservation were taken with a 5 by 7 plate camera and are stunning in their high artistic quality. Roosevelt was particularly riveted by the tufted puffins and seals (both favorites with the general public) at Three Arch Rocks. Wisely, Finley had left trunks full of more blurry images back in Oregon. Lobbying Roosevelt, Finley complained furiously that plumers were being allowed to operate along the bird-rich Pacific Coast. The Oregon Audubon Society was making headway in policing the area, but Three Arch Rocks needed federal protection—
soon
. Finley spread the photos on a wooden table and explained each one in detail; Roosevelt was nearly jumping with excitement. “Bully, bully,” he kept saying, “we’ll make a sanctuary out of Three Arch Rocks.”
²¹

Its reasonable to assume that Finley left Washington, D.C. energized. Roosevelt had told him that the Biological Survey—when all the legal underbrush was cleared—would declare Three Arch Rocks a federal pre
serve. While it’s true that Finley grew impatient as months and then years went by, he nevertheless trusted Roosevelt to do the right thing. Three Arch Rocks was going to be just one piece in the Biological Survey’s coordinated preservationist strategy for the west coast. The reason for the delay regarding Three Arch Rocks was that the Roosevelt administration wanted to first pass anti-trespassing laws in Congress. Finley also had to tolerate a lot of ridicule from congressmen opposed to the idea of a federal bird reservation in Oregon—particularly oceanic bird rocks—a reservation that nobody except a few ornithologists would ever be allowed to visit. But Congressman Lacey, his hair now iron-gray, calmed Finley down. “All in due time,” Lacey would say. “All in due time.” Disappointment and anxiety occasionally got the best of Finley, but he never forgot his mission. When he had to listen patiently to arguments against birds, Finley, refusing to be baited, remained serene. (For example, Senator Charles Fulton of Oregon once said that birds were like lice. “I really want to know why there should be any sympathy or sentiment about a long-legged, long-necked bird that lives in swamps and eats tadpoles and fish and crawfish and things of that kind,” Fulton asked. “Why we should worry ourselves into a frenzy because some lady adorns her hat with one of its feathers, which appears to be the only use it has.”
²²
)

The outcome was well worth the wait. On June 28, 1906, Congress had enacted the Game and Bird Preserves Protection Act (Refuge Trespass Act) to provide “regulatory authority” to managed uses on reservations administered by the Biological Survey. The act made it a misdemeanor to disrupt birds or their eggs on federal wildlife reservations.
²³
The syndicates were being shut down.

The naturalist Dallas Lore Sharp, in a marvelous manifesto advocating wildlife refuges—
Sanctuary! Sanctuary!
—wrote about Finley and Bohlman rowing out to the fifteen-acre Three Arch Rocks to study the strange birdlife there. Sharp also brought Roosevelt into the narrative, explaining how the combination of these three bird lovers saved Three Arch Rocks for posterity:

Besides Three Arch Rocks, Finley also fought to save the diversity of wildlife along the Washington state coastline. At Flattery Rocks alone—more than 800 islands, seal rocks, and reefs—special interests were wreaking environmental havoc. The feather and egg mongers were destroying the fourteen species of seabirds that bred along the Flattery Rocks, including fork-tailed storm petrels, double-crested cormorants, black oystercatchers, pigeon guillemots, Cassin’s auklets, and tufted puffins. With the Game and Bird Preserves Protection Act on the books, Roosevelt wanted to do something spectacular to save the Washington state rookeries.
²⁵
In 1853 Berthold Seemann—“Naturalist of the Expedition” on board the British explorer Captain Henry Kellett’s ship—had written admiringly about Flattery Rocks in
Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Herald
; Roosevelt had made this classic volume a treasured part of his home library.
²⁶
Now, Finley offered visuals to match that exploration text.

Enthralled by Finley’s wildlife photographs, Roosevelt worried that before long oil derricks would deface Washington’s rugged coastline. And recognizing that the Flattery Rocks system—as well as Copalis Rock and the Quillayute Needles—had been created as a by-product of the Olympic Mountains, he asked Dr. Merriam at the Biological Survey to find a way to preserve these wonders before the population of Tacoma and Seattle and commercial extractors swarmed the coast. Purple starfish, lumpish seals, thrashing whales, crowds of murres, crags, caverns—Roosevelt wanted the biological integrity of these Washington islands preserved unmarred in its entirety. Few oceanic islands in North America, save for those in Alaska, had such steep sides with uncounted colonies of nesting seabirds. If need be, Washington state’s cute tufted puffins, which bred on the rock piles (sometimes even underneath boulders), could be used as an appealing symbol. Coastal Washington was their favorite North American congregation point outside Alaska.