5

The Boone and Crockett Club

George Bird Grinnell, Madison Grant, William T. Hornaday, Charles H. Townsend, Charles Sheldon

OF ALL THE INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PRESERVATION OF ALASkan lands and wildlife, none deserves more credit than the Boone and Crockett Club. This small but highly effective organization fused the power of government and the perspectives of an outdoor-oriented elite to draft a blueprint for national land and wildlife protection. It led wildlife groups during the first decades of the conservation movement and adopted a disproportionate interest in Alaska.

Despite the immensity of the American land, its natural integrity soon withered before the driving force of entrepreneurship. In the face of apathy and opposition from the public and governments, a few early voices called for conservation of wildlife and wildlands. George Catlin pleaded in 1832 for a vast Western park to preserve both the land and the way of life of the Indians. In Walden (1854) Thoreau extolled the virtues of Nature as an antidote to industrializing civilization. George Perkins Marsh, having witnessed environmental collapse in the Near East and elsewhere, anticipated the ecological era by more than a century in Man and Nature (1864), warning that survival of civilization depended on maintenance of the integrity of the land. Frederick Law Olmsted urged the acquisition of public parks. In the 1870s Interior Secretary Carl Schurz and John Wesley Powell, later chief of the U.S. Geological Survey, advocated conservation of forests and watersheds. Such appeals made almost no impression on a Congress responsive to the demands of settlers and to timber, mining, grazing, railroad, and other acquisitive interests.

At the state level, on the other hand, outdoor sportsmen and nature groups began to press legislatures for conservation measures in the post–Civil War era. National publications, among them outdoor sporting magazines, acted as leading critics of the rampant despoiling of forests and wildlife. Bird watchers and other nature enthusiasts added their voices for reform, and humanitarians, opposed to mistreatment of animals, supplemented the push for conservation measures. An increasingly urbanized society grew less inclined to view Nature as a force to be conquered. Rather, Nature took on status as an asset to be conserved, appreciated, and even romanticized. Darwinian concepts of evolution revised the notion that humans possessed a divine right to dominate and exploit Nature. Not least, the Progressive Era of political reform lent force to the notion that natural resources should be conserved and rationally managed for the good of society.

Motives behind the conservation of wildlife and, therefore, what exactly should be conserved varied. Some like John Muir espoused spiritual values. Others worked for concepts of justice or efficiency, and many valued forms of recreation. Outdoor sportsmen wanted a guaranteed supply of fish and game, as did the arms industries that helped fund their organizations. A few elite hunter groups had broader goals in mind, including habitat preservation. One of these, the Boone and Crockett Club, initiated the effort that moved the federal government to action in wildlife protection. Its originator and leading light, George Bird Grinnell, transformed conservation in Alaska and the United States.

GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL

Grinnell (1849–1938) came from a privileged family in New York City. Huguenot immigrants to Rhode Island in 1630, the Grinnells attained prominent positions in business, education, and politics. George’s grandfather represented Massachusetts in Congress, and his father ran textile and investment businesses in New York. An interest in birds gained reinforcement when at age seven George moved to Audubon Park where the family had purchased land from Lucy Bakewell Audubon, widow of John James. Mrs. Audubon, George’s academic tutor, shaped his character as well as his interest in Nature. Surrounded by Audubon’s paintings, artifacts, and accounts of expeditions, young George grew fascinated by the West. His father, his uncle Tom, and Audubon’s sons John and Victor, who lived at Audubon Park, all encouraged his interest in birds and his work in taxidermy.

An undisciplined and indifferent student, George nevertheless entered Yale and graduated in 1870. That summer he joined Yale paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh in a fossil-hunting expedition to Nebraska, Wyoming, and Utah. He returned to employment at his father’s investment firm and in 1872 accepted an invitation to participate in a traditional Pawnee buffalo hunt in Nebraska. This experience confirmed a lifelong interest in Indians, about whom he wrote extensively, and a concern about the destruction of the buffalo by market hunters.¹

Traveling in the plains and Rockies, Grinnell personally encountered much of the American frontier. At least twenty books and as many articles flowed from his adventures with wildlife, hunters, Indians, Cavalry soldiers, and fortune seekers. General Custer chose him as a naturalist for the 1874 Black Hills expedition. The next year Grinnell accompanied the Ludlow expedition to the new Yellowstone National Park. When Custer sent word in 1876 inviting him to join the trip that ended in Little Big Horn country, duties prevented Grinnell from leaving his work at the Peabody Museum.²

Witnessing the decline of wildlife in the West, Grinnell derived an interest in conservation work. He inherited his father’s investment firm but quickly tired of it and sold it. At the museum he completed a Yale doctorate in osteology and paleontology. In 1876 he signed on as natural history editor and, from 1879 to 1911, as editor-in-chief of the journal Forest and Stream, one of the earliest conservation-oriented outdoor magazines. He adopted and elaborated upon a code of “sportsmanship” originating in the British upper class, articulated by his editor predecessor Charles Hallock. The true “sportsman” took game in a restrained, clean, and dignified manner, within the context of an understanding of the quarry and its environment. By contrast, unsportsmanlike hunters killed wastefully, crudely, without great skill or knowledge, or, worst of all, for crass commercial gain. Grinnell also promulgated the British notion that sportsmanlike hunting instilled courage and strength of character, without which a nation would be vulnerable to aggressors.³

The gentleman-hunter concept, modified to idealize wilderness adventure as differentiated from the English day-in-the-field, evolved as a reaction to increased urbanization and alienation from Nature in everyday American life after the Civil War. It sought to keep alive pioneer virtues of rugged individualism as the frontier disappeared. A related phenomenon, nature appreciation, expressed the romantic ideal of spiritual fulfillment through closeness to Nature. The noble hunter and nature sophisticate conceptions also enabled established Americans of Anglo-Saxon origin to maintain their distance from the lower classes and southern European immigrants. The two images, popularized by such publications as Forest and Stream, spread to less privileged groups and added impetus to wildlife conservation action by government.⁴

Grinnell may also be seen as a practitioner and promoter of the myth of the American frontier superman. In this view, as the nation grew more industrialized and citified it began to lose the manly virtues of physical prowess, courage, self-reliance, integrity, freedom, and individualistic pursuit of progress that appeared to characterize leading men on the frontier. The society seemed to be “going soft,” as had Europe. To nurture the frontier virtues, writers, scientists, and adventurers romanticized the West. They set about recording, collecting, and preserving its artifacts. Wealthy Eastern men, whose fortunes had often been made through destructive exploitation of the frontier, sought to link themselves to the frontier myth. They visited the West as explorers, hunters, or absentee ranch owners. However consciously, they wanted to define their manhood and legitimize their leadership in a modernizing world. Further, they considered pioneer virtues vital for the moral integrity of the nation and for the nation’s standing in the world.

A model of the neo-frontiersman emerged in the form of the noble hunter-naturalist. As a hunter of big game in the wilderness away from the comforts of civilization, he could prove his courage, physical prowess, self-reliance, and ability to take aggressive action when needed. As a naturalist he demonstrated his education, discretion in taking game, and devotion to preserving the wildlife that gave the wilderness its special character. A successful hunter-naturalist could return from the wilds to the admiration of his colleagues and the public, rejuvenated as a leader in business, military, or civic affairs. Theodore Roosevelt best exemplified the model in the minds of the public. But George Bird Grinnell, Roosevelt’s friend, may have done more to shape the hunter-naturalist image than any other person. His vision achieved some of its most enduring expressions in the writings of Forest and Stream and the workings of the Boone and Crockett Club.⁵

Convinced that organized greed threatened the very existence of wild resources as demonstrated by the fate of the buffalo, Grinnell embarked on a crusade to end market hunting and protect wildlife. Merging a business management concept and an appeal to democratic ideology, he called for management of forests and wildlife on behalf of the people as a whole rather than leaving their fate to a narrow few who destroyed for monetary gain. Protected forests, he contended, would be necessary for healthy game populations and should be managed by government professionals on a scientific basis for sustained yield. The notion of ownership by and for the public provided a basis for the American national park philosophy.⁶

Grinnell exercised an abiding influence on Theodore Roosevelt, whom he first met in New York in the early 1880s. Having read a Grinnell commentary questioning some of his assertions in Hunting Trips of the Ranchman, Roosevelt strode into the offender’s office for a showdown. The two men took a liking to one another and met frequently thereafter to discuss mutual interests in Nature and the West, setting the stage for Roosevelt’s commitment to conservation.⁷ Grinnell persuaded Roosevelt to join the decade-long effort to save Yellowstone Park from ruin by hunters and commercial interests. Grinnell conceived the idea of an elite group of hunter-conservationists to model the ideals of true outdoor sportsmanship and to work for the preservation of game species. Roosevelt liked the plan and arranged a dinner meeting in 1887, attended by Grinnell, at which the Boone and Crockett Club originated. The club adopted its name from two famous frontiersmen who symbolized manly virtues. It received its direction from Roosevelt and from Grinnell, who used Forest and Stream as its voice. Through the Yellowstone campaign the club strengthened its public following.⁸

Historian John F. Reiger considered the Yellowstone episode, culminating in protective legislation in 1894, the beginning of the American conservation movement, for several reasons. First, the enabling law recognized the need for continual on-site management, a future standard for national lands. Second, the fight focused on saving the park’s buffalo herd from poachers. This generated a national expression of support from the public, who lamented the destruction of the great herds on the plains and realized that wildlife would disappear if not protected. Third, the campaign involved top conservation leaders working together for the first time. Fourth, Yellowstone’s designation as a national park presented a model for all forest reservations. The campaign and its outcome perfectly reflected Grinnell’s philosophy and cemented Roosevelt’s dedication to land and wildlife protection.⁹

A conservation measure crucial for American wildlands, the Forest Reserves Act of 1891, sought to curb the destruction of Western forests and their rapid appropriation by large private interests. General John W. Noble, Benjamin Harrison’s secretary of the interior, succeeded in having the measure inserted in a bill in conference committee, and it passed without notice by Congress, which would almost certainly have opposed it.¹⁰ The measure formed the legislative basis of the national forest system. Noble, a Boone and Crockett Club member, proved instrumental in convincing Harrison to support the first reserves.

Afognak Island in Alaska, among other candidates for reserve status, received Grinnell’s attention. A study of Alaskan salmon fisheries ordered by Secretary Noble originated the effort. The team’s report, reflecting concern over excessive commercial fishing, recommended setting aside part of Afognak as a salmon reserve. Officials called it the Afognak Forest and Fish Culture Reserve, but Grinnell saw it as a refuge for wildlife and applied his editorials and personal influence. Harrison signed the order in 1892.¹¹ Afognak Island, often cited as the first federal wildlife reserve, contributed to the conservation movement as an important early Boone and Crockett success and a step in involving outdoor sporting groups in national efforts to protect wildlife.¹²

Grinnell reinforced his ties to Alaska by joining the 1899 Harriman Expedition and authoring its report on the salmon industry. As an active member, foremost writer, and long-term president of Boone and Crockett, he directly or indirectly influenced every important Alaskan wildlife issue from the game law of 1902 to the Game Law of 1925 and Glacier Bay National Monument in 1925. He played a prominent role in the passing of the Lacey Act of 1900 to curb commercial exploitation of mammals and birds. He participated in Roosevelt’s 1902–1909 forest reserve selections, the Migratory Bird Acts of 1913 and 1918, and the establishment of Katmai National Monument in 1918.

Outside Alaska, Grinnell’s initiative led directly to the establishment of Glacier National Park in 1910. In addition to the Boone and Crockett Club, he had founded and directed the forerunner of the National Audubon Society in 1886. It failed because he could not handle the paperwork; 50,000 people had joined by 1888. Local chapters continued and the national organization revived in 1905. Grinnell helped found the New York Zoological Society (1895), Society of American Foresters (1900), North American Wildlife Foundation (1935), and Wildlife Management Institute (1935). He held leadership positions in the National Audubon Society, National Park Committee, and National Parks Association. President Calvin Coolidge presented him the Roosevelt Memorial Service Award in 1925.¹³ The citation stated in part, “[N]one has done more to preserve vast areas of picturesque wilderness. . . . [Y]ou have done a noteworthy service in bringing to the men and women of a harried and worried age the relaxation and revitalization which comes with nature.”¹⁴

Historian James B. Trefethen described Grinnell as “a forerunner of the preservationist school of conservation” and assessed his character as follows:

Grinnell was quiet, modest and self-effacing to the point of shyness, but his personal accomplishments and experience rival fiction. His circle of friends ranged from frontier trappers and Indian warriors to generals, millionaires, leaders in Congress, cabinet members and Presidents of the United States. . . . As Aldo Leopold is recognized as the founder of modern wildlife management, Grinnell in many ways was the spiritual father of Leopold.¹⁵

New York Times editors titled Grinnell the “father of American conservation.”¹⁶

Politically astute and moderate as well as a hunter, Grinnell could appreciate the viewpoints of nonhunters. As the elder statesman of the conservation movement in the 1920s and 1930s, he bridged the gap between the two groups, making possible many achievements in wildlife conservation. Grinnell molded and moved several of the central American conservation principles of the 20th Century.

George Bird Grinnell at Yale, ca. 1890s. Yale University Archives. Few if any Americans did more than Grinnell to advance wildlife conservation.

Boone and Crockett endured for 40 years or more as one of the leading groups in the conservation movement. During the first three decades of the 20th Century the club operated in close coordination with eight other outdoor sporting and nature organizations: American Bison Society, American Game Protective Association, American Ornithologists’ Union, American Society of Mammalogists, American Museum of Natural History, Camp Fire Club of America, National Association of Audubon Societies, and New York Zoological Society. Club members had taken the lead in founding most of these groups. About three dozen prominent men who knew one another sat on their governing boards. This “interlocking directorate,” essentially controlled by Boone and Crockett, made up the core of the conservation movement.¹⁷ Roosevelt’s presidency (1901–1909) enhanced the movement’s power and advanced its goals considerably. Club members enjoyed access, often behind the scenes, to a wide range of top government officials, some of them associate members of the club. For over half a century virtually every chief of the Bureau of Biological Survey and its successor, the Fish and Wildlife Service, held a regular or associate membership.

MADISON GRANT

Grinnell’s background and interests closely paralleled those of another leading hunter-naturalist in Alaska’s environmental future, Madison Grant (1865–1937). A New York patrician, lawyer, and son of a prominent physician and city health commissioner who won a Congressional Medal of Honor for gallantry in the Civil War, Grant knew how to operate in the political realm. His earlier ancestors had settled in New York and New England in the 1620s and 1630s and become religious, political, and military leaders. One, Robert Treat Paine, signed the Declaration of Independence. The Grant family lived in a mansion on Long Island where Madison played in the surrounding countryside and developed a love for wild creatures. In his teens he studied in Germany.

Following degrees at Yale in 1887 and Columbia Law School in 1890, Grant opened a law office in New York City. Not much interested in law, he pursued an active social life in the exclusive clubs where wealthy men spent their time. He founded and led several organizations. Some of these, such as the Society of Colonial Wars, emphasized the historical prominence of the members’ families. Outside of New York, Grant engaged in big game hunting—in the West, Canada, and Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula. He met George Bird Grinnell, who nominated him for Boone and Crockett Club membership.¹⁸ Close friends, the two worked together on conservation issues for more than 40 years.

Quickly assuming a leadership role within Boone and Crockett, Grant became the driving force behind its conservation activities. He soon won the confidence of Theodore Roosevelt, another man of highly similar background and interests. After Roosevelt moved to Washington in 1894 to serve on the Civil Service Commission, he left the day-to-day activities in the hands of Grinnell and Grant. They shifted the focus of club activities from social get-togethers toward political action. Grant’s quiet demeanor and multiple contacts among the Eastern elite suited the club’s lobbying agenda. He organized legislative efforts and moved them forward by meeting key people in private settings. Grinnell, a member of some of the same social clubs, advanced the agenda through Forest and Stream.¹⁹

Grant and Grinnell kept in daily contact to develop political strategy. They first attacked market hunting and worked for state and federal laws to stop it. They understood the need for habitat as distinct from species protection and strove for the creation of forest reserves. Grant persuaded Gifford Pinchot, Roosevelt’s chief forester and a fellow Boone and Crockett member, to recommend forest reserves in the West and Alaska. Pinchot opposed wildlife sanctuaries in national parks, however.

Moving in a preservationist direction, Grant pushed for national parks and for game reserves in national forests. He believed, and convinced many of his hunting colleagues including Roosevelt, that other creatures had a right to exist. Boone and Crockett set up a committee on refuges in 1901 and became the most prominent force for American wildland preservation. The committee, largely through Grant, achieved its goal through the establishment of Mt. McKinley, Glacier, Olympic, and Everglades national parks.²⁰

Well ahead of his time in thinking about predators, Grant saw them as beneficial in that they weeded out the less fit of their prey. He expressed the belief publicly in 1911. Supplementing the efforts of the American Society of Mammalogists and the New York Zoological Society, Boone and Crockett officially opposed predator control in 1929. Grant helped convince the conservation community that wildlife, like other aspects of society, needed to be managed. Boone and Crockett’s game preservation committee officially endorsed game management in 1915, citing the overpopulation of elk in Yellowstone after removal of predators.²¹

Madison Grant at Yale, 1912. Yale University Archives. Grant and Grinnell led Boone and Crockett Club efforts in wildlife conservation.

Observing the multiplying encroachments on game during his travels, Grant worried about their prospects for survival. Of the Alaska situation he wrote, “It should be clearly understood that the game of Alaska, or any other region, does not belong exclusively to the human inhabitants of that particular region. . . . The interest of the entire people of the U.S. and to some extent that of the civilized world, is centered in the continued existence of the forms of animal life which have come down to us from an immense antiquity through the slow process of evolution.” As a hunter and established Boone and Crockett member he pinned the blame for Alaska wildlife depletion on commercial hunting:

The destruction of game is far more often effected by local residents than it is by visiting sportsmen, but the chief evildoer, and the public enemy of all classes, is the professional hunter, either Indian or white, who kills for the market. Worse still, perhaps, is the professional dealer in heads and antlers, who employs such hunters to provide game heads for the decoration of the banquet halls of the growing class of would-be sportsmen, who enjoy the suggestion of hunting prowess conferred by a selected collection of purchased heads.²²

Grant’s answer to the threat to big game species went beyond game protection laws: “[P]reserves should be set aside in Alaska, while land is yet of little value. . . . Certain islands should also be utilized, particularly in southeastern Alaska. Beyond doubt such refuges will ultimately be established, but it is to be hoped that they can be done before the game is decimated and the forests cut down and burned.”²³ It took seven more decades to win protection for the brown bears on Admiralty Island, one of the objects of Grant’s concern.

Grant’s interest in Alaska and love of wildlife naturally focused on the welfare of game species. The rapid expansion of market hunting to supply the gold miners sparked action by Boone and Crockett. Grant organized a 1901 exploring and collecting expedition led by Andrew J. Stone and funded by the New York Zoological Society, Boone and Crockett, and the American Museum of Natural History. Stone’s party traveled down the Mackenzie and Yukon rivers and along the coast to Southeast Alaska. Also in 1901 Grant sent J. Alden Loring to the Cook Inlet region. Loring’s portrayals of the waste of wildlife moved Grant and his colleagues to action to stop market hunting in Alaska.

Grant and his friend and fellow Boone and Crockett member, Representative John F. Lacey of Iowa, collaborated to draft a bill to stop the market export of game from Alaska. The first protective game law for the territory, it passed in 1902. Market hunters objected, but Grant insisted that the law would benefit the individual Alaskan by conserving game. He returned to Alaska in 1907 as part of an expedition to dig up a mastodon skeleton and toured the interior to assess the game situation. He gained the impression that, while the export of game had been controlled, irresponsible killing had continued. Alaska Natives, he believed, destroyed more than white hunters did. A 1908 law, influenced by Boone and Crockett, introduced more flexibility in regulations and reduced the number of trophies a nonresident could export.²⁴

Outside of Alaska, Grant participated decisively in a long list of important government decisions. He and Lacey co-drafted the Lacey Act of 1900 that increased the national government’s responsibility for wildlife. Another monumental measure, the Migratory Bird Act of 1913, owed much to Grant.²⁵ He took leadership positions in efforts to save the pronghorn antelope, European bison, whales, Galapagos tortoises, mountain gorillas, and numerous other endangered species. These measures and the setting aside of reserves lent both strength and legitimacy to government protection of wildlife. They set precedents to be followed by states, other nations, and subsequent actions by the federal government.

An inveterate joiner, Grant held leadership positions in more than 30 organizations. Of those working on conservation on a national level, he co-founded the American Bison Society (1905), the National Parks Association (1919), and, with John C. Merriam of the University of California, the Save-the-Redwoods League (1919). He founded the American Committee for International Wildlife Protection (1930) and presided over Boone and Crockett for the last twelve years of his life. The 1,605-acre Madison Grant Forest and Elk Refuge (1946) preserves a stand of redwoods in memory of Grant’s work. He is also honored in the naming of Rangifer tarandus granti, or Grant’s caribou. Originally denoting the subspecies encountered by Andrew Stone in 1901 on the Alaska Peninsula, the name later applied to all caribou in Alaska and the Yukon.²⁶

Grant’s concerns about disappearing wildlife and the necessity of management to maintain populations influenced his social theory. A “splitter” mammalogist, he saw numerous racial distinctions among humans. Like wildlife, he thought, some races are superior to others. He noted the disruption caused by alien wildlife species and the dramatic influx of immigrants in New York. He concluded that immigration, particularly from southern and eastern Europe, posed a threat to both wildlife and the social order. In addition to his respected writings on wildlife, Grant promulgated theories of racial distinction and hierarchy that made him an internationally recognized racist. Notwithstanding his numerous accomplishments in wildlife conservation, the loss of support among scientists caused his conservation work to be nearly forgotten.²⁷

Boone and Crockett counted as one of its most significant accomplishments the creation of the New York Zoological Society (NYZS) to oversee a zoological park for New York wherein animals could enjoy semi-natural surroundings. Madison Grant, the prime mover, and C. Grant La Farge succeeded in lobbying the bill through the New York Legislature in April 1895. Boone and Crockett exercised an abiding influence over NYZS through Grant and Henry Fairfield Osborn.²⁸ The NYZS envisioned much more than a park; it planned to advance wildlife preservation. Even before the New York Zoological Park (popularly called the Bronx Zoo) opened in 1899, writings on endangered species appeared in the society’s bulletin. Thereafter NYZS, later renamed the Wildlife Conservation Society, took part in several Alaskan and many national and international efforts to preserve wild creatures.

WILLIAM T. HORNADAY

Grant and Osborn selected as the New York Zoological Park’s first director William Temple Hornaday, a noted zoologist and taxidermist. Hornaday (1854–1937) grew up on farms in Indiana and Iowa, where he spent plenty of time outdoors. At sixteen he entered Oskaloosa College for a year, and then transferred to Iowa State College at Ames. There he studied natural sciences for two years and decided on a career in taxidermy and museum work. In 1873 he signed on as an apprentice taxidermist in Ward’s Natural History Establishment in Rochester, New York, an institution that fielded collecting expeditions and supplied specimens to museums. Hornaday’s excellent work won him a six-year assignment as a collector in the Caribbean, South America, India, Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula, and Borneo. He brought back the greatest aggregation of faunal specimens ever gathered by one person—all of which he had personally prepared. In 1880 he co-founded the American Society of Taxidermists, and in 1882 he became chief taxidermist at the Smithsonian. There he developed his ideas for more realistic displays, including family groupings in natural habitat. An 1886 trip to the West impressed on him the extent of devastation of wild mammals. He resolved to fight for wildlife protection and in 1889 wrote The Extermination of the American Bison.

When Congress appropriated funds for a National Zoological Park, the Smithsonian named Hornaday director. But he could not abide the controlling behavior of the Smithsonian’s new director, Samuel P. Langley, so he resigned in 1890 and entered the real estate business. When the Boone and Crockett Club succeeded in launching the New York Zoological Park, Hornaday accepted its directorship in 1896.²⁹

Boone and Crockett and New York Zoological Society board members Madison Grant and Henry Fairfield Osborn acted decisively in the formulation of the park and its policies, as well as its spin-off organizations and projects. Hornaday directed the New York Zoological Park until his retirement in 1926. At a meeting hosted by the park, NYZS co-founded the American Bison Society. As co-founder, first president, and a strong champion of the society, Hornaday earned much of the credit for rescuing the buffalo from the edge of extinction. In 1911, through NYZS, he organized the Permanent Wild Life Protection Fund, eventually a leader in the creation of parks and wildlife preserves in Africa and other continents. Hornaday’s book Our Vanishing Wild Life went into print just in time to aid passage of the federal Migratory Bird Act of 1913. Also in 1913 he authored the key provision of a bill backed by conservation groups, banning the importation of exotic birds for use in women’s hats.³⁰ In all, he wrote twenty books and numerous magazine articles and letters to editors.³¹

Maintaining a lively interest in Alaska even though he never visited it, Hornaday helped bring into being the game laws of 1902 and 1908. In a 1902 article in Recreation Magazine he raged against the loss of wildlife and pointed out that “there is not one line of game law to protect the game of Alaska or restrict its slaughter in any manner.” He urged readers to support a bill before Congress declaring the Kenai Peninsula a wildlife preserve and empowering the president to create others by proclamation. He called for a game preserve to take in a wide coastal strip from Bristol Bay to Yakutat, including Kodiak-Afognak islands and the Alaska and Kenai peninsulas.³² He directed heavy criticism at the lack of controls on hunting by Natives and prospectors. “Alaska and its resources,” he asserted, “do not belong to the very few people from ‘the States’ who have gone there to make their fortunes and get out again as quickly as possible.” He recommended banning the sale of wild game, quadrupling the warden force, halving the bag limits on big game, and instituting a ten-year moratorium on the killing of walruses for their ivory.³³ Most of these suggestions ultimately became law.

Hornaday worked tirelessly for decades to save wildlife species. He aggressively criticized commercial hunting and the arms industry and incurred the wrath of hunter-conservationists with his opposition to sport hunting. A former hunter for museums, he evolved into militant if somewhat selective preservationism: “The wild life of the world is not ours, to dispose of wholly as we please. We hold it in trust, for the benefit of ourselves, and equal benefits to those who come after us. As honorable guardians we have no right to waste and squander the heritage of our grandchildren. It is our duty to stay the hand that strives to apply the torch.” He did not hesitate to identify “the hand.” Terming them an “army of destruction,” he declared, “In the United States there are about 5,000,000 gunners, game-hogs and sportsmen. In that entire multitude I venture to say that there are not over 2,000 men or boys who by reason of their own high principles could be trusted in country to hunt wild game wholly unrestrained by the hand of the law.”³⁴ He believed “the mental attitude of the men who shoot constitutes a deadly factor in the destruction of wild life and the extermination of species. Fully ninety-five percent of the sportsmen, gunners, and other men and boys who kill big game, all over the world and in all nations, regard game birds and mammals only as things to be killed and eaten, and not as creatures worth preserving for their beauty or their interest to mankind.”³⁵

Like most conservationists of his era, Hornaday thought wildlife needed protection from other wildlife as well as from humans. “Unmoral” animals, predators that killed other animals (of use to humans), needed to be “brought to justice.” He made an exception for owls because they ate so many rodents. Reflecting the moralistic humanitarianism of the era and projecting it to nonhumans, he foresaw a time when animals would no longer act violently toward one another. But as a zoo director, Hornaday fought back against humanitarian charges of the cruelty of caging wild creatures. He saw “no higher use” for an animal than to be in “comfortable captivity” where people could view it.³⁶

Through his writings and political action, Hornaday helped shape environmental issues, including fur seal (Chapter 2) and migratory bird protection and the 1925 Alaska Game Law. After retirement he continued his efforts through the Permanent Wild Life Protection Fund. Summing up his career, he explained that “my chief object in life for the past fifty-four years has been to try to bring the wild creatures of the world to the human millions who cannot get to them. . . . But as an ethical estimate, my thirty-five years of fighting to preserve some wild life has ranked far above that academic work.”³⁷ Never satisfied with the progress made by conservationists, he declared at age 80 that the thought of the ongoing destruction of wildlife still put him in a “red rage,” inspiring him to continue his work.³⁸

Hornaday resented not being accepted as a Boone and Crockett member despite his outstanding deeds as a big game collector. At length he gained associate membership. His tenacity, arrogance, and abrasiveness, backed by a rare talent for skewering his adversaries with well-chosen words, severely strained his connections to other conservationists.³⁹ His dedication and combative character also called attention to his causes and won support in the media and the public. He could claim among his admirers Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt. From his deathbed he wrote FDR asking him to do all he could to preserve wildlife; FDR replied that he would do so.⁴⁰ At FDR’s request, Mt. Hornaday in Yellowstone National Park received its name following Hornaday’s death.⁴¹

William T. Hornaday and buffalo calf, Washington, DC, 1890. Smithsonian Archives. A prominent museum director and ardent conservationist, Hornaday pushed for wildlife protection laws in Alaska.

CHARLES H. TOWNSEND

Research scientist and associate Boone and Crockett member Charles Haskins Townsend (1859–1944) also cared about Alaskan environmental conditions. Townsend, a Pennsylvanian, studied zoology at Ward’s Natural History Establishment and the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. He then served the U.S. Fish Commission and as a field naturalist for the Smithsonian. He first visited Alaska in 1885 on the USS Corwin expedition up the Kowak (Kobuk) River. During nine years in the Pacific aboard the research vessel Albatross, he studied birds, walrus, sea lions, fur seals, and fish in the Bering Sea. Annual summer inspection trips to the seal rookeries in the Pribilofs between 1891 and 1897 led to membership on the Bering Sea and fur seal commissions. In 1902 he began a 35-year career as director of the New York Aquarium, a facility controlled by the New York Zoological Society. A leading authority on water life around the world, Townsend headed the effort for preservation of the Galapagos tortoises. Among Alaskan topics, he wrote on birds, sea mammals, fish, mammoths, and reindeer.⁴²

While serving in 1911 on the Fur Seal Advisory Board, Townsend endorsed a limited harvest of male fur seals on the Pribilofs, thereby running afoul of his colleagues William T. Hornaday and Henry W. Elliott. An unpleasant encounter wherein his position met with defeat soured Townsend’s feelings toward Hornaday.⁴³ Attempting to head off a congressional vote to postpone the seal harvest for five years, Townsend had written an article in the influential journal Science. The proposal, he said, originated from “men who had not been on the islands for twenty years [Elliott] and who cannot appreciate the recent detailed investigations. Severe criticisms have also been made by men [Hornaday] who have not been there at all, and whose opinions on the subject are of little value.”⁴⁴

Townsend had represented both the Cleveland and Taft administrations in fur seal negotiations. He possessed considerable knowledge of the animals, whereas Hornaday did not. David Starr Jordan and Bureau of Biological Survey chief C. Hart Merriam, also experienced in fur seal policy, backed Townsend, as did Boone and Crockett’s game preservation committee. They adopted a utilitarian position advocating limited harvest, whereas Hornaday adamantly opposed any killing. Madison Grant tried in vain to smooth over relations between his friend Hornaday and the others. The dispute over the fur seals ended in a compromise five-year moratorium on killing at the Pribilofs.⁴⁵

Townsend and Charles Sheldon worked for two decades on the game preservation committee, influencing a variety of Alaskan issues including the Game Law of 1925. The two men also helped lead the National Conference on Outdoor Recreation, Townsend chairing its fish committee.⁴⁶

Charles Haskins Townsend, 1918. Smithsonian Archives. A government marine scientist and aquarium director, Townsend began research in Alaska in 1885.

CHARLES SHELDON

Boone and Crockett recruited yet another and by no means the least significant of Alaska’s early conservation leaders: Vermonter Charles Alexander Sheldon (1867–1928). Like Grinnell, Grant, and Roosevelt, Sheldon personified the ideals of the hunter-naturalist. A privileged first child of a prominent family that owned a prosperous marble business, Sheldon spent much of his youth outdoors. He entered Yale in 1886 and graduated in 1890 as a civil engineer, but the family business had failed, so he took a management trainee position in the Lake Shore and Southern Michigan Railway Company. His honest and friendly character showed in his peaceful settlement of a strike. From 1894 to 1898 he managed an Albany, New York, company that made heaters for railroad cars. His leadership skills came to the attention of investors who held railroad and mining interests in Mexico. On behalf of his investors he acquired a mine that turned out to be Mexico’s top producer of silver; his share in the mine made him wealthy.⁴⁷

Sheldon left Mexico in 1902. He had hunted big game there and found mountain sheep and grizzly bears especially appealing. He knew that the Bureau of Biological Survey (BBS) collected fauna from all over North America. In 1903 he went to Washington and met BBS chief C. Hart Merriam and Edward W. Nelson, the latter in charge of the Mexico field operation. They suggested that he combine hunting and collecting for the Smithsonian. In all, he contributed 554 specimens to the museum, 120 of them big game mammals.

Nelson had collected the first white mountain sheep from Alaska (and named the subspecies for William H. Dall) and wanted more information and specimens. BBS arranged a collecting trip to the Yukon, and Sheldon, BBS biologist Wilfred Osgood, and wildlife artist Carl Rungius arrived there in 1904. Upon Sheldon’s return home to New York the Boone and Crockett Club, at Nelson’s recommendation, elected him to membership. There he befriended George Bird Grinnell, who trained him in conservation activism, and Theodore Roosevelt, whom he often visited at the White House and Sagamore Hill on Long Island.⁴⁸

Sheldon hunted brown bears on Prince William Sound, Alaska, in May 1905. Next he collected sheep in the Yukon mountains until October. He wrote a popular book, The Wilderness of the Upper Yukon, about his experiences. A year later he stalked sheep and grizzly bears around Mt. McKinley from July to October. In summer 1907 he returned and, assisted by Alaskan outdoorsman Harry Karstens, built a cabin and remained over the winter to study Dall sheep. Sheldon had made himself the foremost authority on the subspecies. On their honeymoon trip in 1909, Sheldon and his bride camped and watched brown bears on Admiralty Island.⁴⁹

Sheldon perceived the grizzly bear as the prime symbol of Alaskan wilderness and worked to protect it. Displaying astute political judgment and moderate utilitarian conservationist views, he succeeded in cultivating Alaskan support for the 1925 Game Law, for which he performed double duty as a principal author and a leading lobbyist.⁵⁰

Upon discovering the notes from Sheldon’s 1907–1908 Mt. McKinley adventure, his son asked him why they had not been published. “I’ve said enough about myself,” replied Sheldon. Following his death the family published his best-known book, The Wilderness of Denali.⁵¹ Sheldon’s experiences in the Denali region inspired him to lead the successful drive (Chapter 6) to designate it a national park in 1917.

Sheldon persevered as a political activist. Like Grinnell and Grant, he preferred quiet diplomacy and allowed others to receive the credit for his achievements. Working closely alongside Grinnell and Nelson as chair of the game preservation committee, Sheldon committed himself to nearly full-time effort in wildlife protection. He moved the family to Washington in 1916 so he could more effectively carry out his work. Their home became a gathering spot for conservationists, hunters, and explorers, including Edward Nelson, Amundsen, and Byrd. Sheldon went on a few more collecting trips to the Southwest and worked to save the vanishing pronghorn antelope. After his death, Boone and Crockett raised money for a Charles Sheldon National Antelope Range in Nevada, so designated in 1931 and expanded to 540,000 acres by FDR in 1936.⁵² It became the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge.

Sheldon’s philosophy derived from his own experience and that of the club: “Wildlife conservation will best be promoted by the encouragement of legitimate sport; of scientific interest in natural history; and by building up the public opinion to make and enforce wise laws.”⁵³ Like some of his colleagues, Sheldon believed that people, Americans in particular, derived moral and spiritual strength and physical well-being from closeness to Nature. He advocated a nationwide recreation plan, coordinated by the federal government, to establish parks and wild areas at national, state, and local levels.⁵⁴

Sheldon served as leading organizer and a member of the permanent committee of the National Conference on Outdoor Recreation (1924–1929). The conference brought together government agencies and private groups to make numerous recommendations on wildlife management and the setting aside of natural areas. It succeeded in getting a high proportion of its resolutions translated into government policy, thus materially promoting modern wildlife management. It also helped raise outdoor recreation to national prominence as a valued realm of activity. Historian James B. Trefethen regarded the conference as Boone and Crockett’s greatest single contribution.⁵⁵

Of Sheldon’s character C. Hart Merriam observed: “Sheldon was a splendid type of vigorous manhood; self reliant, courageous, of pleasing personality, possessed of sober, earnest dignity, unassuming, simple in tastes, kindly, generous and when estimating others always fair, giving due weight to their environment and opportunities.”⁵⁶ Trefethen ventured that “probably no individual in the history of biological inquiry has possessed the rare combination of scientific curiosity, dedication to a cause, physical stamina, and financial independence that made his research possible.” Roosevelt regarded him as a model Boone and Crockett member.⁵⁷ A man of such social standing and virtue fit the mold for national leadership in the conservation movement, and Sheldon filled the role.

By all appearances in good health, Sheldon died of a heart attack at age 60 at the family’s summer home in Nova Scotia. His achievements and writings helped confirm Alaska’s reputation as a wild, forbidding arena of adventure fit to challenge the best that a man could muster. At the same time, he left a priceless legacy to Alaskan wildlife conservation. But the ingredients of success for people like Sheldon, Grinnell, and Grant—a wealthy, influential, urban, Eastern elite who determined the fate of Alaska’s resources from power bases in New York and Washington—fostered an image of outside control that embittered Alaskan attitudes toward the federal government for decades to come.

The scientists and hunter-naturalists of Boone and Crockett practiced stout advocacy of an advanced form of utilitarian conservation. In addition to the goal of protecting favored species, they called for refuges embodying many aspects of ecosystem sustainability. To the extent practicable they gathered scientific data and urged that wildlife management be government-controlled and science-based. Their devotion to wildlife, especially large land mammals, reached well beyond guaranteeing a supply for hunters; they believed the animals possessed inherent value. Hornaday and, to some extent, Grant articulated elements of species rights philosophy.

Boone and Crockett activities constituted an early, if elite, form of public activism, but the club formed productive alliances with nature associations and with outdoor sporting groups more narrowly interested in hunting and fishing. The club’s inordinate access to decision-making power enabled it to see its ideas through to completion. Initially, its contributions to environmental thinking showed more in the States than in Alaska. Yet broad-scale Alaska land and wildlife protection, and specific accomplishments such as Mt. McKinley National Park and the 1925 Alaska Game Law, owed much to its efforts.