page_title: Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt
section_title: Conservation
hierarchical_section_title: Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt / Domestic policy / Conservation
caption_attribution_description: English: 1908 US editorial cartoon on Theodore Roosevelt and conservation
context_page_description: The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt began on September 14, 1901, when Theodore Roosevelt became the 26th President of the United States upon the assassination and death of President William McKinley, and ended on March 4, 1909. Roosevelt had been the Vice President of the United States for only 194 days when he succeeded to the presidency. A Republican, he ran for and won by a landslide a four-year term as president in 1904. He was succeeded by his protégé and chosen successor, William Howard Taft.
  A Progressive reformer, Roosevelt earned a reputation as a "trust buster" through his regulatory reforms and antitrust prosecutions. His presidency saw the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act, which established the Food and Drug Administration to regulate food safety, and the Hepburn Act, which increased the regulatory power of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Roosevelt took care, however, to show that he did not disagree with trusts and capitalism in principle, but was only against monopolistic practices. His "Square Deal" included regulation of railroad rates and pure foods and drugs; he saw it as a fair deal for both the average citizen and the businessmen.
context_section_description: Roosevelt was a prominent conservationist, putting the issue high on the national agenda. Roosevelt's conservation efforts were aimed not just at environment protection, but also at ensuring that society as a whole, rather than just select individuals or companies, benefited from the country's natural resources. His key adviser and subordinate on environmental matters was Gifford Pinchot, the head of the Bureau of Forestry. Roosevelt increased Pinchot's power over environmental issues by transferring control over national forests from the Department of the Interior to the Bureau of Forestry, which was part of the Agriculture Department. Pinchot's agency was renamed to the United States Forest Service, and Pinchot presided over the implementation of assertive conservationist policies in national forests.
  Roosevelt encouraged the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902, which promoted federal construction of dams to irrigate small farms and placed 230 million acres (360,000 mi² or 930,000 km²) under federal protection. In 1906, Congress passed the Antiquities Act, granting the president the power to create national monuments in federal lands. Roosevelt set aside more federal land, national parks, and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined. Roosevelt established the Inland Waterways Commission to coordinate construction of water projects for both conservation and transportation purposes, and in 1908 he hosted the Conference of Governors to boost support for conservation. After the conference, Roosevelt established the National Conservation Commission to take an inventory of the nation's natural resources.
  Roosevelt's policies faced opposition from both environmental activists like John Muir and opponents of conservation like Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado. While Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, wanted nature preserved for the sake of pure beauty, Roosevelt subscribed to Pinchot's formulation, "to make the forest produce the largest amount of whatever crop or service will be most useful, and keep on producing it for generation after generation of men and trees."  Teller and other opponents of conservation, meanwhile, believed that conservation would prevent the economic development of the West and feared the centralization of power in Washington. The backlash to Roosevelt's ambitious policies prevented further conservation efforts in the final years of Roosevelt's presidency and would later contribute to the Pinchot–Ballinger controversy during the Taft administration.
caption: A political cartoon describing Roosevelt as "a practical forester"
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