Theodore Roosevelt's Climate Change Legacy: What the Conservation President Teaches Us

A National Park Service article built on its "History and Hope for Climate Action" toolkit, written under the Biden administration; policies it mentions may since have changed.

In a world shaped by climate change, new challenges arrive daily. Theodore Roosevelt, the "conservation president", also faced new ecological challenges in a fast-changing world. What can his story teach us?

Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir and others riding through Yosemite in 1903. NPS photo.

Connection to the land

The NPS puts it simply: caring about something is the first step toward caring for it. Roosevelt's bond with the land began when, as a young man, he lived in the North Dakota Badlands, hunting and enjoying their solitude. It shaped his values for life. "I have always said that I would not have been President had it not been for my experience in North Dakota," he wrote.

As president he kept finding ways to connect with land. In 1903 he explored Yosemite with John Muir, spending three nights in the backcountry; hearing Muir describe the damage being done there encouraged him to protect Yosemite Valley. He also visited the Grand Canyon and many other places. Those experiences led him to protect Yosemite, the Grand Canyon and much more — 228 federally preserved places in all.

Roosevelt and Muir in Yosemite. NPS photo.

He did not do it alone. Millions of people wrote him letters and petitions asking him to protect places they loved, and that public pressure made conservation laws easier to pass. Roosevelt used his power to turn people's concerns into action.

That legacy matters more with climate change. Park lands act as carbon sinks, storing carbon released by burning fossil fuels, and they give wildlife room to adapt as their surroundings change.

Wildlife such as whales find refuge in conserved places. NPS / Sean Neilson.

Whose "nature"?

Today's public lands are the product of many voices — but Roosevelt did not listen to all of them. Following the cultural norms of his time, he disregarded Indigenous knowledge built up over millennia and believed that "pristine" wilderness had to be empty of people.

Of the Grand Canyon he said: "You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it." To him, people could only make natural places worse. The idea survives: the 1964 Wilderness Act describes wilderness as a place where "man himself is a visitor who does not remain."

Roosevelt was captivated by the Grand Canyon. He is said to have ridden into the canyon to tell the Havasupai people they had to leave their home, now Havasupai Gardens, to make way for a national park. NPS photo.

His view owed something to Yosemite, where the government had violently displaced and killed Indigenous People. As president, Roosevelt continued to remove Indigenous People from their ancestral homes to create protected land. A historian has written that he targeted tribal lands for transfer to the U.S. Forest Service, playing a major part in shrinking Indian lands and eroding tribal sovereignty. Roosevelt himself called a war against "savages" the most righteous of all wars, and said:

"I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth."

In violently displacing Indigenous Peoples, he also shut out their perspectives — and narrowed his own understanding of conservation.

Why this matters for climate change

Chuck Sams, the 19th director of the National Park Service, is Cayuse and Walla Walla and an enrolled member of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. NPS photo.

What Roosevelt missed is that the land he called wilderness had been — and still is — stewarded by Indigenous Peoples. As Chuck Sams put it: "Wilderness is a colonial, Western European ideal. What people call 'wild,' we have called 'home' for thousands of years."

Many Indigenous Peoples care for land in reciprocal ways, using knowledge developed over millennia — and recent studies agree it works:

• A 2019 study comparing land managed or co-managed by Indigenous People around the world with other protected areas, such as parks, found it as biodiverse or more so.
• Biodiverse places are more resilient to extremes such as climate change.
• Lands managed by Indigenous Peoples have suffered fewer harms from climate change and been shown to store more carbon.

With biodiversity loss and climate change accelerating, it is time to apply these practices.

Lessons for climate action

Seeing Roosevelt's whole legacy helps us reflect on our own biases: where do we want to be like him, and what can we learn from the harm he caused?

• It takes everyone. Millions of voices made preservation possible; everyone has a part to play on climate change too.
• Conserve land. Parks hold a lot of carbon and shelter wildlife, so more land will need to be kept from development. The United Nations and the Biden administration committed to "30 by 30": conserving 30 percent of the world's land and ocean by 2030.
• Rethink our relationship with nature. Many people still see people as separate from nature and only able to harm it — yet direct stewardship can make land healthier. That shift often begins with chances to spend time outdoors and care for land, and with more public land where green space is scarce. A 2022 intergovernmental report found that how nature is valued in political and economic decisions strongly affects biodiversity; those choices are now a major driver of biodiversity loss and climate change, and changing them could make a big difference.
• Centre Indigenous stewardship. At some parks the NPS now co-stewards land with tribes and is bringing Indigenous practices back into management.

Southern Sierra Miwuk people perform a ceremony to light a prescribed fire as Yosemite's fire crew looks on. Brent Johnson, NPS.

At Yosemite, managers are returning cultural burning to the landscape with the park's seven traditionally associated tribes and groups: the American Indian Council of Mariposa County (Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation), Bishop Paiute Tribe, Bridgeport Indian Colony, Mono Lake Kootzaduka'a, North Fork Rancheria of Mono Indians of California, Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians, and Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians. Cultural burning has a long history and helps ecosystems thrive; with climate change making California's wildfires more frequent and intense, proactive burns with Indigenous partners help build a landscape that can last. The place that inspired Roosevelt can inspire us still.

History rhymes

A saying often credited to Mark Twain holds that history does not repeat, but it rhymes: events follow familiar patterns. Learning from the past lets us follow it where it was right and choose differently where it was not. History also shows that people have met great challenges before — and that working together makes a difference.

NPS photo / Connar L'Ecuyer.

Ideas for action:

• Build your own connection to land, then help look after it — volunteer, speak up for it, share it with people you love.
• Learn the history of the places you are in, especially of their Indigenous Peoples, and follow Indigenous stewardship practices where you can.
• Join a local climate action group.
• Talk about climate change and Roosevelt's story with people you know.
• Tell your representatives what you think — as millions told Roosevelt.
• Reduce your carbon footprint, and tell friends and family what you did.

Sources

• National Park Service, "Theodore Roosevelt's Climate Change Legacy." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/theodore-roosevelt-climate-change.htm
• The article cites Roosevelt's The Winning of the West (1906) and Hermann Hagedorn's Roosevelt in the Bad Lands (1921); Char Miller and Clay S. Jenkinson, Theodore Roosevelt, Naturalist in the Arena (2020); Chuck Sams's 2022 interview with High Country News; Schuster and others (2019); Walker and others (2020); the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (2019, 2022); Banasiak, Bilmes and Loomis (2015) on park carbon; and Gutierrez and others (2021) on Sierra Nevada wildfire.
• The original spells one tribe's name "Chuckchansi"; it is the Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.