>>NARRATOR: Theodore Roosevelt--America's conservation president--did not develop
his passion for protecting the wilderness in isolation.
One of his earliest influences was his Uncle Rob who lived next door to the
young TR.
>>DOUGLAS BRINKLEY: Conservation was part of the Roosevelt family DNA.
His uncle, Robert Barnwell Roosevelt was considered
perhaps the greatest conservationist in America,
who's running campaigns to save
the shad in the Hudson River,
to protect the Great Lakes from ruin and over-fishing.
>>NARRATOR: Alone in the Roosevelt family, Uncle Rob was a Democrat.
And while he didn't share a party affiliation with his nephew, his career
certainly left an imprint on Theodore.
Robert Roosevelt fought tirelessly for conservation policy as a member of
Congress,
published observational nature writing,
and was himself a great outdoorsman.
But Robert wasn't the only influential uncle in Theodore's life.
As an adult he would adopt another important figure into his conservation family.
>>BRINKLEY: The person he called Oom John, Dutch for Uncle John, was John Burroughs—the great
poet-naturalist and transcendentalist of the Catskills.
>>NARRATOR: John Burroughs was a nature writer and one of the most important figures in early
20th Century American conservation.
Before Roosevelt met Burroughs in 1889, he was already a great
admirer of the naturalist's work.
>>PATRICIA O'TOOLE: Theodore Roosevelt
was a writer himself.
He read extensively in
history and literature,
and natural history. And he considered
John Burroughs a great writer who happened to write about nature.
What he loved about
Burroughs' writing was
that it brought
nature to life. You know, you could see the sights and hear the sounds.
>>NARRATOR: Roosevelt and Burroughs traveled to Yellowstone in 1903.
It was a trip that affirmed Roosevelt's fervor for the wilderness and inspired some
of his most eloquent prose.
Burroughs and Roosevelt shared a great love of birds--
an obsession they held in common with another influential figure in
Roosevelt's life,
Museum ornithologist Frank Chapman.
>>DAVID HURST THOMAS: Although Theodore Roosevelt was not literally born
at the American Museum of Natural History, he was raised in these halls
from his very first days. He was so fascinated
with what he learned and particularly under the guidance of Frank Chapman, one of
the leading ornithologists in the country and curator here.
>>BRINKLEY: They both shared a great love of bird life.
And Chapman later went down to Florida and wrote extraordinary books
about the bird nirvana
you know, in northern Florida.
But they became inseparable. And I think Chapman helped
TR and was an advisor as much as anybody.
>>NARRATOR: Chapman developed some of the
Museum's first habitat dioramas
to call attention to the plight of species endangered by the demand for
feathers on women's hats.
It was at the urging of Frank Chapman and other members of the Audubon Society
that Theodore Roosevelt as president established the first federal bird
reserve on Florida's Pelican Island in 1903.
Several of the Museum's dioramas are linked to Theodore Roosevelt and his
circle of conservationists.
The Alaska Brown Bear diorama was underwritten in the 1940s by
the Boone and Crockett Club,
a hunter naturalist organization
first led by Roosevelt and
George Bird Grinnell.
Grinnell was the editor of Forest and Stream magazine.
And the two men had great success in lobbying Congress on behalf of wildlife.
Just six years after the Boone and Crockett Club's founding
they persuaded Congress to pass the Park Protection Act,
a piece of legislation providing for the enforcement of laws
protecting Yellowstone National Park from
commercial development.
One of Theodore Roosevelt's greatest allies in his crusade to preserve
America's natural beauty
was Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the United States Forest Service.
>>O'TOOLE: As governor he began collaborating with Gifford Pinchot
who was the chief forester of the United States.
And together they did a lot to protect
the forests of New York state.
And when TR became president
Gifford Pinchot had a very large vision of what the United States could do in relation
to all natural resources.
And he found a very willing partner
in Theodore Roosevelt.
>>BRINKLEY: The big conservationists in Roosevelt's life inspired him mightily.
And so he became a champion
of the environment. There was not really a conservation movement, per se,
until Theodore Roosevelt. We never have had an environmental president like this--
somebody who every day
of his life tried to do something to make the American landscape a little better.