Carson remained loyal to FDR’s conservation legacy. When ecologists criticized the president for building Grand Coulee Dam, nearly destroying the salmon runs, Carson concurred but also added that Patuxent helped establish the Division of River Basin Studies to prevent future damage to fish as a result of federal water projects.
III
On May 10, 1939, to coincide with the opening of Patuxent, President Roosevelt issued Executive Orders 8110 to 8129, which established twenty federal migratory waterfowl refuges in North Dakota.45 Eighteen months earlier in Grand Forks, Roosevelt had spoken to farmers about proper land stewardship, telling them that uprooting trees and plowing out grass chased away all the migratory birds. With genuine emotion in his voice, he promised that the New Deal would soon help “farm families settle on good land.”46
Under FDR’s plan, North Dakota farmers would provide the lands for these twenty waterfowl sanctuaries as part of the ingenious Limited-Interest Program. Roosevelt told these farmers that if they allowed the Biological Survey to purchase easements on their land to ensure the retention of breeding grounds for migratory birds, then the government would award them cash payments—money that a farm family could use to stave off foreclosure.47 Additionally, the Biological Survey would offer to any farmers who participated free advice on scientific water management strategies and crop diversification methods from agricultural experts.48 After procuring these easement rights, the federal government would, in effect, manage certain aspects of the land while the farmers retained ownership of their acreage: this was a socialist-tinged agrarian policy with a distinctly American flavor.
Once North Dakota farmers enrolled in the Limited-Interest Program, they had to allow the WPA, PWA, and CCC to build structures such as “check” dams, reservoirs, and ponds on their lands. As FDR sold the program, it was a win-win: a partnership of conservation and agriculture that continues to the present day. There was also environmental tourism as a side benefit: North Dakota soon became a favorite destination for birders and hunters alike, and this boosted tourism revenue.
The Roosevelt name had a lingering appeal in North Dakota. It was at the Elkhorn Ranch along the Little Missouri River, near the Badlands village of Medora, that Theodore Roosevelt—the self-proclaimed “wilderness hunter”—developed his conservation ethic in the 1880s. To honor TR’s outdoors legacy, FDR opened a CCC headquarters in Bismarck and gave instructions to erect another camp in Medora. Shortly thereafter, land for Roosevelt Recreation Demonstration Area in the Badlands was purchased with National Industrial Recovery Act funds. The CCC built dams and dug lakes in the area, which eventually became Theodore Roosevelt National Park.49 FDR wanted to transform Medora into a popular recreation center—like Jackson Hole, Wyoming, or Gatlinburg, Tennessee—an attractive gateway town where tourists could learn about his famous cousin’s Wild West days, visit prairie dog burrows, and watch buffalo graze on rehabilitated grasslands. North Dakota would later be nicknamed the “Rough Rider State” after TR.
On June 12, Roosevelt boldly added fifteen more migratory bird refuges to the ever-expanding system in North Dakota.50 No other state has ever been so richly transformed in terms of ecology—or so completely micromanaged by Washington officials. Composed of grasslands, ravines, and modest lakes, the refuges formed in June were typical of the mottled prairies of the upper Midwest. Central Flyway species benefiting from FDR’s second round of North Dakota proclamations included sandhill cranes, the sharp-tailed grouse, nesting ducks (mallards, gadwalls, pintails, and blue-winged teals), and four types of geese. Biologists at Patuxent immediately stepped up to help these new migratory bird refuges in North Dakota combat outbreaks of botulism and chlamydiosis. USDA wardens distributed supplemental food—such as hardstem bulrush, saltmarsh bulrush, and sago pondweed—to the waterfowl species struggling on the drought-ravaged refuges.51
Roosevelt especially wanted the North Dakota waterfowl refuges on the Des Lacs and the upper and lower Souris rivers to become showcases for wildlife protection and water conservation in the Great Plains states.52 In October, fifty thousand mallards arrived at the North Dakota refuges, clamoring in lakes and bushes, creating hunting opportunities theretofore never seen.53 It’s no exaggeration to say that FDR saved North Dakota from ecological ruin during the Dust Bowl years. “This massive outpouring of federal funds by the Democratic administration in Washington,” Elwyn B. Robinson wrote in History of North Dakota, “was of the utmost importance to the state, contributing much to its survival and wellbeing.”54 At the time of his second announcement, adding fifteen refuges, more than thirteen thousand North Dakotans were working on WPA projects, and the WPA had spent $23 million in the state.
The drought in North Dakota lasted from 1929 to 1940, although not every area was affected, except in two brutal years, 1934 and 1936. Only rarely did residents see normal, moist conditions. Not only was the state parched, it was abnormally hot in the summer (breaking the state record, with a reading of 121 degrees Fahrenheit in 1936). Dust storms were regular occurrences. And that was not all that nature unleashed on North Dakota: the winters over the same periods were often extreme as well. It is understandable that the state lost population every year for twenty years, starting in 1930. The New Deal held out some hope for North Dakota, if only because it did not forget about a state that was down but not out.
Dozens of North Dakota’s picturesque stone post offices and durable city halls were built by New Deal agencies—with custom-painted murals included. Migratory waterfowl refuges were also part and parcel of the New Deal’s revitalization of the Great Plains.55 On the Manitoba border, as a botanical preserve, New Deal work-relief crews built the International Peace Garden (giving North Dakota the nickname “The Peace State”). CCC Company 794 SP-1, “Camp Borderline,” laid out stone bridges, constructed a lodge of North Dakota timber and Manitoba wood, and transformed the flatland by planting 150,000 flowers annually.56 There was even a gigantic floral clock on display. Because this International Peace Garden was so closely linked to the natural wildlife and migratory waterfowl refuges, it became the headquarters for the North American Game Warden Museum.57
Under Roosevelt, the National Park Service helped develop sixteen new state park units in North Dakota. FDR thought that North Dakota could attract a booming summer tourist trade by publicizing local legends. Interpretive centers were built along the river to provide history lessons on the state’s buffalo hunters, fur traders, and Native American tribes. The best example of the CCC’s historic restoration work in the state, however, was Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park, which perpetuated the former home of the Seventh Cavalry, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer (it was from this outpost that he left to fight the Battle of Little Big Horn). Roosevelt thought the entire Missouri River, as it snaked throughout the state, told the story of the nation’s expansion westward, and of figures from Lewis and Clark to Sitting Bull to Theodore Roosevelt.
As a result of Patuxent research initiatives, North Dakota’s Limited-Interest Program, CCC’s can-doism, a network of refuges and new parks, and reasonable hunting laws, the waterfowl population in the United States doubled between 1934 and 1941. North Dakota alone became home to more than a third of America’s waterfowl protection areas.58 Encouraged by this progress in bolstering the future of migratory birds, FDR was determined to enact stringent federal regulations protecting the American bald eagle. Rosalie Edge, one of the founders of the Emergency Conservation Committee (ECC), had become the leading activist for birds of prey. Besides lobbying to establish Olympic National Park, the ECC campaigned on behalf of many species, publishing fact-filled pamphlets like A Last Plea for Waterfowl and The Antelope’s S.O.S.: The Extinction of the Pronghorn Antelope Is a Preventable Misfortune That We Are Neglecting to Prevent. Its hard-hitting campaigns were deservedly effective. Ickes turned to Edge for regular counsel on wildlife protection issues; he was tired of dealing with special interest sportsmen’s clubs that prioritized hunting above all else.59
Rosalie Edge at the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, which she created in eastern Pennsylvania. A resident of New York City, Mrs. Edge chafed at what she considered to be the hypocrisy or ineptitude of established conservation groups, uncovering a plot by which the directors of one group sold unrestricted hunting rights on a nature “preserve” in Louisiana. Working mostly on the outside of such conservation groups, she was a force in the movement, buying Hawk Mountain herself, in order to give the raptors of the region a true safe haven.
Edge established a sanctuary for hawks near Kempton, Pennsylvania. No battle over conservation ever fazed her. She didn’t hesitate to take on even the Audubon Society after she perceived that it had become corrupted by generous donations from oil and gas interests. In 1939, she fought to destigmatize hawks, which had long been considered dangerous pests by farmers. The following year, “Hawks—Good and Bad,” an article in National Sportsman, advocated the extermination of “undesirable” raptors. This rankled Edge. The article derided Cooper’s hawk (Accipiter cooperii), the sharp-shinned hawk (Accipiter striatus), and the goshawk (Accipiter gentilis) as winged vermin and offered anatomically precise drawings of the supposed menaces so farmers could more easily identify them for wholesale slaughter. Apparently, the crime of these hawks and the reason to exterminate them was that they raided poultry yards.60 Edge helped popularize the notion that poultry could be protected from eagles and hawks through means other than wholesale extermination.
When Roosevelt read an ECC pamphlet—Save the Eagle: Shall We Allow Our National Emblem to Become Extinct?—he was moved to take executive action. He refused to allow the symbol of the United States to become extinct. FDR, who had designed a postage stamp featuring the bald eagle, endorsed the hard-charging ECC pamphlet: “The case made for the protection of the eagle, if indeed it were necessary to make a case for it, is convincing and persuasive,” Roosevelt wrote to Edge, “and I share with you the desire to see this bird adequately protected by law.”61 Working through back channels, Roosevelt was soon able to get the bald eagle the strict federal protection it needed.62
As the ECC’s influence on the White House demonstrated, New Deal conservation didn’t operate in a vacuum in the late 1930s. Researchers from land-grant universities helped keep federal agencies on the right path. For example, Ohio State University’s Stone Laboratory had developed a first-rate fish hatchery, located on Gibraltar Island in Lake Erie near the site of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry’s dramatic victory over the British in the War of 1812. In 1936 FDR signed a proclamation establishing the Perry’s Victory and International Peace Memorial as a national monument, thus affording further history and environmental protection to a string of Ohio islands, including Gibraltar, which were like stepping-stones to Canada.63 While Erie was the smallest of the five Great Lakes by water volume, it was the richest in fish biodiversity. Ohioans, deeply proud of their 312 miles of Erie shoreline, accepted federal aid in the 1930s to help refurbish the lake. And Roosevelt, on August 2, 1938, signed Executive Order 7937, establishing West Sister Island Wildlife Refuge as a sanctuary for the largest wading bird nesting colony on the U.S. Great Lakes.64 It provides a haven for herons, egrets, and cormorants. (Commodore Perry had put West Sister Island as the dateline on his famous message to General William Henry Harrison: “We have met the enemy and they are ours.”)
Throughout the 1930s crews on commercial fishing boats in Lake Erie collected yellow perch and lake whitefish eggs, bringing them to Stone Lab to hatch. The eggs were then fertilized and placed in hatching jars. The Stone Laboratory housed nine hatching batteries. Each battery held 228 hatching jars (for a total of 2,052). Water was constantly run through the jars to keep the eggs rolling. Once the fry hatched, the current forced them up and out of the jars into the troughs and then down to collection basins. The fry were then moved to the raceways to grow another six inches before they were released back into Lake Erie.
More than any other president, Roosevelt focused on the essential value of fish hatcheries for the nation. In 1936, Dr. Gabrielson hired Robert Rucker, an expert on fish pathology, to grapple with depletion issues in California and the Pacific Northwest. Rucker helped build the Western Fish Disease Laboratory in Seattle.65 He would spend thirty-seven years in his laboratory (or in the field), finding answers for those who relied on a stable and healthy fish population. As his career went on, he devoted as much time to research on the effect of pollution on fish as naturally caused diseases.
IV
Throughout early 1939, FDR worked to give the CCC a public relations boost. Roosevelt emphasized that enrollees had planted 1.7 billion trees in its first six years in operation, saving millions of acres of farmland from soil erosion and helping communities recover from flooding and hurricanes. Robert Fechner, the organization’s director, was on the cover of Time that year; the accompanying article reeled off CCC statistics: 104,000 miles of truck trails built; 71,692 miles of telephone lines laid; forty thousand bridges completed; forty-five thousand (plus) buildings added; dams of various sizes and types finished; and so on. Buried in all this was an analysis of the CCC’s positive and negative environmental impacts.66
Because 1940 was an election year, Roosevelt wanted to tout his CCC-related accomplishments—2.5 million men put back to work and more than $500 million making its way back to the families of enrollees—to help secure continued congressional funding for his program.67 There wasn’t a newspaper editor in America who didn’t respect those figures. As the Pittsburgh Press noted in August 1939, “No other relief agency has been so popular with the American people as the Civilian Conservation Corps.”68
With the notable exception of Representative Oscar Stanton DePriest of Illinois, who opposed it because it discriminated against racial minorities, the CCC seemed to be beyond congressional reproach. Thomas Beck of Collier’s helped celebrate it by publishing an anniversary article, “The CCC—Indispensable.” As Rexford Tugwell, a member of FDR’s brain trust, later recalled, “the CCC quickly became too popular for criticism.”69
As part of the intensified public relations, Fechner also contributed a piece to the Washington Evening Star, explaining that the CCC had taught about seventy-five thousand illiterate enrollees how to read and write. Another 700,000 had used the CCC as a springboard to finish high school or complete vocational training. For Fechner, the former labor organizer, the CCC was always about training young men; there seemed to be nothing of Muir in him. “Virtually every enrollee has been improved in health,” he wrote. “All have been taught to work.”70
When the CCC was first established in 1933, its primary detractors had been labor unions and socialists. However, by 1939, in a surprising turn of events, it was visionary environmentalists who were leading the charge against Roosevelt’s pet program. That June, the administration took an unexpected hit to its conservation strategy (though the sting wasn’t immediately felt) when Aldo Leopold delivered an address in Milwaukee to a joint meeting of the Society of American Foresters and the Ecological Society of America. Leopold was highly critical of the New Deal approach to land management and was especially critical of the CCC. He accused the CCC of purging beech, white silver, and tamarack trees in the Midwest in the name of “timber stand improvement” and creating unwelcome pollens by planting the wrong trees in the wrong parts of the country. The farmland around Bismarck became a severe allergy zone. The buckthorn the CCC planted was now considered an undesirable “invasive species” in North Dakota.71
Leopold became first chair of the Department of Wildlife Management at the University of Wisconsin that year. For five years, since 1934, his innovative course, Wildlife Ecology 118, had been growing in renown, even exerting influence on the operational protocols of both Patuxent and the North Dakota Limited-Interest Program. An argument could be made that FDR’s two announcements of 1939 regarding additional refuges in North Dakota echoed the recommendations in Leopold’s highly influential Game Management. That book—along with Leopold’s articles on
the value of farm ponds, farmer-sportsmen alliances, game warden training, evergreen planting, wildflower maintenance, bird banding, and prairie chicken restoration—helped persuade USDA to help farmers in the upper Midwest revitalize their worn-out lands. Even though Leopold was challenging Roosevelt’s aggressive conservationist vision as damaging certain terrains, he nevertheless admired the president.72
Patuxent was too new for Leopold to grasp the great leap the administration was making in 1939 to enhance the human ability to protect ecosystems and wildlife. His problem was really with the National Wildlife Research Center in Denver, which specialized in predator control. First founded in 1886 as the Division of Economic Ornithology, NWRC-Denver was famous for eradicating predator species throughout the West. NWRC-Denver fought the proliferation of animal predators (wolves and wolverines) and bird menaces (the blackbird and grackle) in hopes of protecting domesticated animals, minimizing damage to forest resources, reducing wildlife hazards to aviation, and curtailing rodent damage to crops and rangeland. If Henry Wallace had come to Denver instead of Patuxent, he would have been photographed not cuddling a fox kit, but grabbing a dead coyote by the scruff of the neck.
Leopold looked on FDR’s policies with a mixture of opinions. What made the president so impressive to Leopold was that he didn’t abandon the migratory bird refuge campaign during his second term, even though the specter of war threatened the United States. After Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939, it seemed clear to most Americans that the nation would eventually get involved in the European war. And the threat posed to world peace by Japan was no less severe. But even with such a full plate, FDR regularly inquired about Arizona desert bighorn, North Dakota grasslands, birdlife in Maryland, and the first forestry projects in the Ozark highlands of Missouri.
Rightful Heritage: The Renewal of America Page 52
