What would Teddy think?

By Michael Scott guest columnist

The presidential train was waterstopping in Altoona, Pa., late in the day of April 1, 1903. A crowd of well-wishers filled the platform as a solitary, shadowy figure approached the engine from behind the train. "Will you take a passenger in there Š Mr. Engineer, I'd like to ride with you ..." The hitch-hiker was the president of the United States. Theodore Roosevelt rode west into the mountains that night in the happy company of an engineer and a fireman.

This month marks the beginning of the 100th anniversary of that cross-country trip to Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and Yosemite National Parks. Roosevelt was a rancher, a rough rider, a writer, a historian, a hunter, a conservationist, a man of strong "family values" and a great visionary president. He had made manifest his love of the wilderness in 1894 as the driving force behind the National Park Protection Act. Roosevelt was a remarkable president who believed that his greatest legacy would be the lands and forests and wildlife that he had used his "bully pulpit" to protect.

In his time Roosevelt would use the military and diplomatic power of the United States to broker international peace agreements, to force regime changes and to assert American doctrines in foreign policy. He was a bold and decisive man governing in dangerous times. He often proclaimed that America should "walk softly and carry a big stick" and he felt just as strongly that "loving America" also meant protecting its greatest and most unique treasures -- natural landscapes and wildlife.

Roosevelt's train journey of 1903 presents us with an ironic mirror to our times. Along his route, news of legal and legislative victories were telegraphed from Washington; he had prevailed against the robber barons' trusts and monopolies and succeeded in increasing wages and protecting workers. After he put strict regulations on runaway corporations Wall Street branded the president "an extremely dangerous man," while he argued that he had saved American business from its own greed and corruption. His words and works still ring clearly across the century.

A man of powerful and poetic expressions, Teddy Roosevelt, would become known as the "father of conservation" for his many accomplishments and for his stentorian rhetoric:

"There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children's children forever, with their majestic beauty all unmarred."

Roosevelt was co-founder of the original hunters' organization, the Boone and Crockett Club, and he understood the necessity for natural ecosystems to be allowed to function as created and to change as nature needed. That for Roosevelt included wolves and other predators.

In the year before his journey, the president had won an appropriation that made the now imperiled Yellowstone bison protected wards of the federal government. He would certainly be saddened and perhaps angered by the recent government slaughter of the great beasts. Roosevelt would understand that these bison are following an ancient and natural instinct to feed and calve in lower pastures before returning to the park. I believe he would grant a presidential pardon to this herd of unique, genetically pure buffalo and find a better place for the 400 cattle that graze nearby.

We must wonder, as we witness a pattern of increasing assaults on our public lands and protected areas -- what would Teddy Roosevelt say to President Bush today? This years' onslaught of federal efforts at mining, drilling, developing, road building and logging on public lands, of threatening the free flow of streams and rivers and of inviting increased numbers of roaring snowmobiles into the sanctity of Yellowstone Park would have enraged Teddy. He might even bring out his "big stick" for use on some of today's politicians. Yellowstone and Everglades National Parks exist today largely because of the vision of Roosevelt and, yet, this past week the administration has asked that these parks be removed from the list of endangered World Heritage Sites. What would Teddy say?

Standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon for the first time, and speaking to an audience of local ranchers and railroad men, shepherds and soldiers and cowboys, Roosevelt looked beyond the profiteers, and mining magnates and hopeful hoteliers and said:

"It is beautiful and terrible and unearthly, leave it as it is, you cannot improve on it.Š The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it -- keep it for your children and your children's children and for all who come after you."

President Roosevelt was a man for all seasons and in this season of great uncertainty we could all find some assurance in again seeking his wisdom and following in his giant footsteps.

Michael Scott is the executive director of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition based in Bozeman.