Author Biography
Theodore Roosevelt did more for conservation of our natural resources and the preservation of sport hunting than any other person in the history of our nation. He showed a keen interest in nature with his first publication at the age of 20 in 1877 on summer birds in Franklin Co., New York. His experiences in the mid-1880s in the South Dakota badlands gave him a first-hand view of the problems associated with westward expansion, unregulated hunting, and the effects of market hunting. In 1887, he and his closest friends founded the Boone and Crockett Club the nation s first conservation organization. He was the Club s first president and an active member until his death in 1919. Under his direction as Club president and president of the United States, numerous laws and legislative actions protecting wildlife and our natural resources were enacted. The creation of the U.S. Forest Service, National Wildlife Refuge System, and the National Park Service, which are among his most notable achievements, paved the way to ultimately set aside tens of millions of acres for the benefit of wildlife, our nation, and future generations. Theodore Roosevelt was the right person at the right time. Frederic Remington was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in depictions of cowboys, Indians, and the US Cavalry of the American West in the late 1800s. Love of adventure and the great outdoors, especially in the West, were the bonds that sealed the friendship between Theodore Roosevelt and Frederic Remington. I wish I were with you out among the sage brush, the great brittle cottonwoods, and the sharply-channeled barren buttes, Roosevelt wrote to the western artist in 1897 from Washington. In 1888, Century Magazine published a series of articles about the West written by Roosevelt and illustrated by Remington.
