Eugenic Conservation in the Progressive Era (White-supremacy and Conservation pt.1)

"Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt," 1939, James Earle Fraser seen in front of the American Museum of Natural History, New York City.

U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt was a conservationist, US expansionist, and supporter of white-supremacist eugenics. He is often ranked by historians among the top 5 US Presidents.
 
He shared these interests, along with generational wealth and power, with his conservation collaborators like lawyer, anthropologist, writer, and zoologist, Madison Grant; or President of the American Museum of Natural History, Henry Osborn; or the first Chief of the US Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot (who was appointed under the Roosevelt administration).
 
Together they worked to create the U.S, Forest Service, five National Parks, eighteen Nationall Monuments, fifty-one bird reserves, four game preserves, and one-hundred-and-fifty National Forests, often with congressional opposition. 

"All men of sane and wholesome thought must dismiss with impatient contempt the plea that these continents should be reserved for the use of scattered savage tribes." - T. Roosevelt
 
Madison Grant, in addition to his conservation work, wrote “The Passing of the Great Race” (1916). This book espouses scientific racism, eugenics, and warns of the decline of the “superior Nordic” Peoples, much like contemporary eugenic "great replacement" and "national suicide" conspiracy theories. "The Passing of the Great Race" also helped create the Immigration Act of 1924, which ensured a dominantly white US population and created the U.S. Border Patrol.
 
Roosevelt and Hitler both wrote Grant letters praising the book. Hitler called the book “my Bible.”  Roosevelt wrote it was “a capital book; in purpose, in vision, in grasp of the facts our people most need to realize.” (emphasis mine)
 
Henry Osborn argued in the foreword to this book that “conservation of that race which has given us the true spirit of Americanism is not a matter either of racial pride or of racial prejudice; it is a matter of love of country.”
 
Gifford Pinchot, as Roosevelt’s pick for the first U.S. Forest Service Chief, practiced fire suppression to preserve the forests for loggers. He also simultaneously served two-terms as the Governor. of Pennsylvania and on the Advisory Council of the American Eugenics Society. 

For these conservationists, preserving their visions for this land was directly tied to their visions for preserving the Great White American Man. (See also: Muscular Mormonism, Muscular Christianity,  Boy Scouts Of America post, and Mount Timpanogos post, and this article: Environmentalism's Racist History.)