24 THE AUDUBON BULLETIN 



Theodore Roosevelt, Conservationist 



Death comes unannounced and takes the mighty among men with as 

 little concern for human welfare as it shows in taking the lowly. Just 

 before daybreak on January 6, Death silently stole away from a sleeping 

 nation its indispensable citizen, a man whose vision, wisdom, counsel and 

 dynamic force are most needed at this dawning of a new era. In the un- 

 timely passing of Theodore Roosevelt, mankind suffers an irreparable loss. 

 The world is much better, however, for his having lived — his good works 

 for the physical, moral, mental and spiritual welfare of man will be felt 

 and appreciated as long as man, in the image of God, inhabits the earth. 



Among the many achievements, mental and physical, by which our 

 myriad-minded, omniactive Roosevelt attained the pinnacle of fame, none 

 is greater or more enduring than his attainments as conservationist. The 

 first chapter of the history of conservation of natural resources cannot be 

 written without the name of Roosevelt. Whatever may be said for others, 

 it was Roosevelt who grasped the big idea of conservation and made it a 

 national and then a world movement. 



Forests, waters, soils, minerals, birds and animals were embraced in the 

 thoroughgoing Roosevelt conservation program. As governor, Roosevelt 

 took measures to protect the forests and wild life of New York. As presi- 

 dent of the United States of America, he made the nation understand that 

 Nature's store of the essentials to life on this globe is not unlimited and 

 that every generation owes a duty to posterity to use this limited store with 

 scientific economy that its benefits may be extended into the future as far as 

 possible. Simultaneously with establishing the principles of conservation, 

 Roosevelt set about putting them in practice, of course. He increased 

 the national forest areas from a little more than forty-six millions to one 

 hundred ninety-four and one-half millions of acres, opened to regulated use 

 the natural resources in these forests, saw to it that every part of the land 

 in these reserves was put to its most efficient use, and opened to farm settle- 

 ment nearly one-half millions of forest lands best suited to that purpose : he 

 put under national regulation and control the use of water power in the 

 national forests, on the public domains and in the navigable rivers, with- 

 drew from private entry many water power sites on twenty-nine streams, 

 and established the practice of making a charge for value received in 

 granting water power rights ; he caused the proceeds from the sales of 

 public lands to be set aside for reclaiming arid lands by irrigation, began 

 twenty-eight projects for the irrigation of more than three millions of acres 

 and the watering of more than thirty thousand farms, built great dams, 

 many of them the greatest in the world, and constructed more than seven 

 thousand miles of main-line canals to hold and distribute water for irriga- 

 tion purposes; he withdrew from all forms of entry, for classification and 

 scientific and economic disposition, more than seventy-five millions of acres 

 of coal lands, established the principles of the retention of federal title to 

 all minerals in lands of unceded territory and the lease of 

 same for a fixed rental, and the separation of surface title from title 

 to minerals in coal and oil lands, and withdrew from private entry almost 

 five millions of acres of phosphate rock, all the phosphate rock area 



