10/28/2026
Happy Birthday to the 26th President of the United States and conservation hero, Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)!
During his remarkably active presidency, Roosevelt protected approximately 230 million acres of public lands between 1901 and 1909. His legacy includes 150 national forests, 55 federal bird reservations and game preserves, 5 national parks, and the first 18 national monuments. In 1905, he created the U.S. Forest Service and appointed Gifford Pinchot as its first Chief Forester. Pinchot’s keen eye for habitat helped bring critical forests and wilderness areas under protection.
An avid ornithologist, Roosevelt also set out to carve habitat for his beloved wildlife. On March 14, 1903, he began what would become the National Wildlife Refuge System. Among its earliest sites were Pelican Island, Florida, which safeguarded a critical rookery for endangered pelicans; Breton Island, Louisiana, thought to be the only refuge Roosevelt visited after leaving office; and the National Bison Range in Montana, perhaps our nation’s first attempt at wildlife restoration. What started as the four-acre Pelican Island Bird Reservation has since grown to more than 560 refuges and monuments, protecting 850 million acres of lands and waters.
Roosevelt and Pinchot, his most trusted advisor, also sought a new term for a new era of environmental action. They settled on “conservation,” and its popularization remains one of Roosevelt’s most important legacies. As he declared in 1907: “The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem, it will avail us little to solve all others.”
Image: President Roosevelt’s choicest recreation – amid nature’s rugged grandeur on Glacier Point, Yosemite. 1903. Retrieved from Library of Congress.
