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>> that training center is the national conservation center, one of the many places douglas brinkley went to research his book. >> we talked about the eagles nest and our discussion was douglas brinkley, about his book on conservation. it's right over your shoulder there. when did that start? >> about five years ago, we had a pair of bald eagles that come in trying to build a nest. first surgeon general they didn't do a very good job. the second season, they came back, tried again. they succeeded in building that nest. they had two eeg lets that year. one died and the other pledged out. >> what does that have to do with the business here? >> until five years ago, the american bald eagle was and dangered species. because of many conservation groups, it was actually taken off the endangered species list

about a year ago. so it's a good -- i think it's a good model for us to aspire to where critters that were almost gone off the face of the earth have come back. >> why do you do this job here as a historian? >> well, i'm an environmentalist historian, so the dream for me was to work in a way to make a difference. i help teach a lot of biologists. the display is seen by about 15,000 students a year. i feel like it's making a difference. >> we know the eagles nest is seen by people all over the united states and the world because they can see it on the web. does that do anything for you? does it bring anybody to your telephone to want to know what's going on in history? >> we have a pretty good history website up. we have fish & wildlife service website up. we put up oral histriss, pictures of art facts. we even put up old historic books. a lot of people look for images

of books, film for decembererations. we get a lot of traffic on the web. >> give us the background on how this got here, who it is, who supports it, who pays for it. >> we're located about 80 miles northwest of washington, d.c. here in shepherdstown, west virginia. and until this place was build, the u.s. fish & wildlife service did its training mostly at your typical airport hilton or airport holiday inn. when we started to design this place, we looked to build it as a place that people in the fish & wildlife service could call home and a place that would represent the importance, that service puts into investing into its employees. we have really talented, really dedicated folks that work here at the fish & wildlife service, but it's really critical that they continue to build their skills so they can do a better

job to deal with the really complex conservation challenges that we face today and that we'll face in the feature. >> mark madison, how much does this cost to pay for? >> steve would have to answer that. >> this place costs about $150 million for everything that we see here. >> who in congress was responsible for it? >> senator robert c. byrd made sure that we had the funding necessary to build the place. but both the first bush administration and the clinton administration requested funds for the project and supported the project. >> and how many buildings are here? >> we have about 17 buildings on about 540 acres. >> how long did it take for it to be built? >> took us about three years. >> what can i book like douglas brinkley's writing about conservation and about theodore roosevelt do for the kind of work you do? >> it can do a lot. first, it can help our employees enjoy more and recognize their own heritage. it helps the american public

realed that just like mona lisa or any other historic art fact, these parks and refuges are really historic items and it helps a lot of people realize what we do. a lot of us gives talks at schools that last for an hour or so. really useful if we can turn it into a substantive history book like doug's. >> your background. i know you graduated from harvard -- what year? >> i graduated from harvard? 199 with a ph.d. in history and science. >> how long have you been here? >> 10 years. this is my 10th anniversary. the best place i've ever worked. i worked as a professor in harvard and australia, but here i feel like i'm doing history in the field. it's a great place. >> steve chase, your background? >> i have a masters in public administration from the barney school in hartford and worked on a lot of different jobs in environmental education, the outdoor business, and public government. and came in to the fish &

wildlife service as presidential management intern in 1990. and started in d.c. and then this project came along and i was able to jump in right at the very start of it. i was on the plane and did a lot of the operational planning as well and was privileged enough to be able to watch this place rise from an old farm in west virginia to probably one of the greatest conservation training locations on the planet.

>> there are a lot of archives and this one is devoted to fish & wildlife. >> this is ground zero for anybody wanting to deal with the issues of wildlife protection. because in these file cabinets here, in the samples that they have, the tax dermy here, the maps, this is how wild america got saved so you can look at the old documents, what's called a biological survey, which later became u.s. fish & wildlife. you track all over the country all different kinds of species. if you wanted to really learn about gray wolves or manatees, this would be audio place to come and start finding how the protection movement got under foot. >> one of the people you write a lot about in your book is jon burros. behind you is an old picture of him and theodore roosevelt. who was he?

>> he was a great american. he was a tran senden tallist. he was taken under the wing of walt whitman when whitman was a nurse for the soldiers. he tacked him for greatness. he had an incredible mind as a naturalist, as a poet, as a writer. he was the most popular person writing on nature after the civil war. you talk about millions of copies of his book sold. so he's a direct descendent of that emerson, thorough, whitman school. and t.r. admired him more than any other single person. when i read all of roosevelt's corks he usually calls people by their first or last name, and he called him uncle john. he felt adopted by john borrows. he wanted to be borrows in his writing. he thanks him in all of his book. one of them puts a letter of tribute of the greatest person.

he was a person that lived up in the cat skills and would write about his black yard, about a bluebird building a nest or about how a river flows or clouds drifting. it was nature in your backyard. borrows said you've got a universe in your backyard. it served that whitman school, in a blade of grass, you can learn a lot about nature. a brilliant writer. i've been working hard with the borrows foundation up in new york to try to make sure all his homes get preserved. library of america does the books of the great writers. faulkner, f. scott fitzgerald, etc. borrows belongs in that top tier. i'd say he's one of the top writers we've ever had and in my opinion one one of the finest naturalists. t.r. loved him. he had borrows come with him out to jell-o stone. they went camping and hiking

together. roosevelt when spend time with his wife and kids. the only guest he would have is john boar rose. they would go bird watching. their correspondence was largely about what they're each seeing. there's no higher compliment to theodore roosevelt that john borrows thought his best writing wasn't about hunting, but about preservation. >> you had a very personal note in there about john borrows. you said that he loved walt whitman. in a par then call expression, you wrote, there's no evidence that they had a homosexual relationship. why did you need to write that? >> because walt whitman was gay. whitman literally adopted borrows. he had these extraordinary matinee idol looks. they basically had love notes to each other. he became a great student of walt whitman. whitman could have picked anybody.

it was borrows. and yet their relationship was one of a platonic nature. but he became borrows almost -- a son to walt whitman. >> all right. we're in this archive facility here at the national center, conservation center for training. how much time did you spend in this room? >> i would come down here -- i didn't spend that much time in this room. this is a place where they keep the art facts. so we're getting special access. mark madison, a historian would come show me items here, which really informed my writing. for example, behind me there's a bag that says biological survey poison. there was a period of time when the biological survey's job was to do pest control and predator control so farmers wouldn't lose livestock with wolves. on the other side of that mission was farmers would sometimes just shoot birds willy nilly. it's biological survey from the u.s. fish & wildlife that says you've got to keep the birds. they're eating the mosquitos.

they're controling the insects. the biological survey is putting out information to farmers on why wildlife is important to keep on your farm, that you don't want to get rid of birds. you want to attract birds. remember, scare crows are always about birds not eating anything, farmers don't want birds. but the sophistication started coming, and allegation issues of soil erosion. the role different animals can play to helping an ecosystem stay alive. issues with deforest asian. -- deforstation. i don't think people in america realize how serious trees are. i mean, you lose trees in this cundi, you lose everything. you'll have no farming. you'll get soil erosion, runoffs. you'll have problems with every part of growing produce if you're not keeping forests. so theodore roosevelt as president would plant trees like in nebraska to also help with

wind. you know, if a farmer is going to do corn, a wind storm would kill the corn. now we have shorter, hybrid corn due to the green revolution, etc. but back then, you had to have trees around -- you had to keep a forest around it just to, you know, blunt winds. so u.s. fish & wildlife wasn't just about bag limits and monitoring wildlife refuge and protecting animals. it was also -- it also had a mission of helping farmers and people living out in the wild coexist with nature in a way that was both economical, utilitarian, and aesthetic. so back to the first time you started thinking about coming to this facility. how did it happen? how did you find out it existed? >> well, i wanted to begin my book with the firth of the federal reservationings t.r. created. the first one is called pelican island, florida. i went there.

i went out on a boat. i went to the island, which is a bird refuge. you can't walk on it -- you can step on birds' nests. the island, for example, there are many like this. but pelican island, pelicans would come and they would breed and nest there. and so they'd all be in a cluster. but the my nare institution, women's fashion during the golded age, wanted feathers for women's caps. they wanted heren feather, etc. so people would come and just gun them all down. and they were massacring birds. there would be heaps of dead birds just for feather. we were losing species in florida. wild florida -- you think that the west was wild? florida was the last untame place. down around the swamps of the everglades and in place. these were a lot of ex-confederates on the land, people that couldn't stand the

federal government with civil war memories. their view was, if it's a bird, i'll shoot it. there's money to be had. roosevelt's first place in 1903 in march is pelican island, florida. we've got this here. these are 1902 surveys of pelican island, which is like a doll op of land, a little island. but it was an incredible pelican, and other supposes, but mainly a pelican resting area. but these are here talking about the bird life. it's the first mapping, really, we had of this kind of wild florida. a man named frank chapman i write about quite a bit in my book. william dutcher being prominent. they eventually got to t.r. and said, we're going to leave the birds of florida if you don't do anything. roosevelt said -- looked into it a little and then famously said, is there anything to stop me?

i so declare it a federal bird reservation. and just grabbed pelican island. it was the first time ever that land was set aside to be run and controlled by a species. before that, you had, like, a yellow stone, but it was for people. this was off-limits. there were signs. no trespassing. and so these types of documents are here. i could go to the island, look at the birds, talk to people. i had to come here to see documents like this. here's the man -- if you go down to sebastian, florida, there's a statue of him down in florida. his home is right there. paul craigle grew up in germany and he loved storks because you weren't allowed to kill storks when they're in your chimneys because it was bad luck to kill a stork in northern europe. the famous hans christian anderson folk tale about the storks and babies were brought by storks. he came over to the united states, first to new york, and then chicago. as a teenager, arrived down there in florida right across from pelican island where t.r.

saved. he saw these people slaughtering the birds. paul craigle started independently taking a shotgun and pointing it at people who would approach to slaughter these birds. he became the pelican watcher. he was considered a bit of a cook because he cared about pelicans so much. he became the first game warden in florida to stop what was known as the feather wars. roosevelt's game wardens, out of his first four usda, department of agriculture, federal government wardens, two of them were murdered down there. i write about the murder of a guy, bradley, in my book. there's two -- here's the first guy t.r. is putting in. two are killed because it was like a feather mafia going on in the industry here for women's fashion. craigle stays on the job, and he was so proud -- i went and i didn't unfortunately get to put

this in my footnotes in my book, for length reasons. i went to his an tess or thes' homes in florida. they showed me his first badge, theodore roosevelt's badge he gave him, and his shotgun. his double barreled shotgun, he pointed at anybody pointing at these birds. t.r. dice, theodore roosevelt died in 1919, january, and he lived on in the 1920's. hardy comes down in a yacht by pelican island and roosevelt said nobody's allowed to even set foot on pelican island. hardy and his yacht guys are playing cards, going on a golfing trip in the 1920's, he's president, they approach pelican island. he comes out on the boat and pointed a gun at the president of the united states and said, i'm roosevelt's warden. t.r. was already dead. get out of here. and he turned harding and those guys back.

the pointing is, conservation was a battle, just like there are land issues. should you drill in anwar, should you not. not only did he create pelican island, t.r., but he created a pearl strategy of bird refuges all the way down florida. it was t.r. saving them. and we would not have these species living in florida. we would have lost wild florida forever if roosevelt didn't act when he did. he had spent time in florida as a rough rider in tampa bay on his way to go fight in cuba. here he is getting ready for battle and was taking notes on birds in the tampa bay area. places like around santa bell island, a beautiful place. a lot on the gulf coast of florida he saved. most famously, key west, the dry or the tuegas, great breeding places. >> go back to the beginning. how did you find this place?

>> that was it. when i start going to thes, they would all say, did you go here, the headquarters. >> i'm basically asking you these questions for others that need to research. how did you get in the door? >> called mark madison, the historian for u.s. fish & wildlife, and part of his job is to interface with scholars. they helped me to particularly -- with looking material, but with these, with slides. i was talking about -- these are the old lantern slides. there's a box of them, brian. i don't know if you can see this there. gron you can see it. but maybe we could get an image put up. that's craigle in a canoe. >> they've got all of the battles and washington state. they have slides. and of florida, of these early wardens and conservationists. we may not know, the people listening, who this guy is, paul craigle. he knew fish & wildlife culture. he's a hero.

as i said, he's got a whole monument down there in florida. the singer arlow guthrie moved to where he was. >> so you called mark madison. >> come here or to any of the places. i've been to yellow stone, yosemite, other ones, too. you come here and try to look at documents, books and things i pretty much had. but they can find this kind of material. and also, to check with them, even today before we were talking, i was asking them, they have the up to date numbers here on species i'm writing about. for example, it's a louisiana -- behind us, a louisiana black bear, or a louisiana bear. it's a subspecies of black bear. and it's almost extinct. there are only 200-some left in the region of louisiana, mississippi, arkansas. there are only 250 approximately

left in the united states. >> and that are alive. >> alive. that's it. we're about to lose the louisiana black bear. only 250 alive. but here at u.s. fish & wildlife, they're going down to louisiana creating reserves for them. the people of ra -- louisiana who used to hunt them, including theodore roosevelt, they want to save the louisiana black bear. people are very proud now with their bear history. william faulkner famously wrote the short story, the bear about -- modeled loosely on a man named colt collier who was a bear hunter. these legendary bear people down there in the delta. we almost -- mass agriculture, overhunting, harvesting, killing bears because they were considered predators. we've almost destroyed them. but here is where they're rehabilitating them. t.r. spent time and wrote about

the river region in great detail. i had what t.r. thought about it. but i needed to ask, what's going on there today? what were the black bear populations like back then that the biological survey had and what are they like today? with different species i was writing about, this is the place i had to come to check. >> so when you come in a place like this, how long do you spend here and what do you do while you're here? >> look at documents. look at books. to be honest, one of the most helpful things is not in this room, but out there. they have a library. in fact, a minute arc they gave me two titles that i didn't know about for perhaps future writing of mine, because they're collecting everything here. i mean, i just noticed a minute ago in this cabinet, i never saw, unfortunately, this little book by c.b. colby on the history of fish & wildlife. they have all these pamphlets, documents, photos. it's a great archive, but the problem with -- why i'm kind of feeling i'm walking into a treasure-trove is a lot of people writing on nature focus

on national parks only. nature is the grand canyon, yellow stone, yosemite, the great smoky mountains, which ising the park service. ken burns in the fall is doing a national parks. people don't know enough about u.s. fish & wildlife. that's what roosevelt cared the most about more than the parks, was thousand save species in their habitats because if you don't have enough wetlands, you can't have the species. and so they monitor everything here. for example, fish & wildlife declared -- helped declare the  florida panther and endangered species. now many of them are getting hit by cars, making it very heart for them to survive. so our government has created a national wildlife refuge under the roosevelt way of thinking. let's create a habitat so this panther can live. we're not saying there are going to be a million of them, but we should not lose the florida

panther. we should not lose the yag waters along new mexico and arizona. we should not lose the polar bear in alaska. this is where they're fighting for species survival. this is where the endangered species act is real. these are the people at fish & wildlife that are out there on the ground. and so my book isn't just about theodore roosevelt. it's about how we got to where this triumph story. we do have a great system. look at the map we have. we're not maintenancing properly due to not enough funding or wildlife refuge system. and commercialization is always encoaching on these. people don't like it in florida if you want to build a development. you mean i can't build a condo complex because of a panther? it's always that balance. >> how do we look to other countries? are there other countries doing the same thing we're doing? >> all around the world, theodore roosevelt was in my

opinion the progenitor of the global wildlife projection movement. if he were alive today, it's like a cover of "time" magazine had lately, he would be fighting, as his great grandson, theodore roosevelt iv is right now, to save these great animals of the planet that we're losing. t.r. loved them. he was not what we call by modern terms a kind of wholistic -- he believed in hunting. he did not believe in hunting so you make a species extinct. so, yes, he cared about snail darts. he cared about butterflies. he cared about wild flowers. he wanted to make sure we had a place for that in modern society. so whatever people are learning in zimbabwe about wildlife protection or in australia, it's borne out of ruse roosevelt's presidency, this sense of global

wildlife protection. >> how often in your research for this book did you go away from a conversation or a place and say, boy, they haven't been doing their job. >> on the ground, you mean? >> i mean, did you ever get irritated by the attitude that somebody had in research or one of these federal agencies that keep all the stuff or libraries? or do you think -- do you -- what kind of mark do you give them? >> i give them an a across the board on being open. not that many people are writing about the history of wildlife protection or the history of conservation, as you might think. for me to come in having written a number of books and say, i'm interested in your collection. a little less so at yellow stone or yosemite because they've been written about a lot. if you go to crater lake, crater lake national park, every american should go to crater lake in oregon. spectacular. the most dazzling blue color lake in that whole region of

southern oregon, which t.r. did so much to protect. the back story of publication had never been written about crater lake. they were helping me get drumets left and right. if you pick a site that hasn't been overcovered or overwritten about, they were thrilled to have somebody. you really care about the history of our park? many people don't think about history of national parks. they're coming for a camping experience, for hiking. they're less interested in the history of a park or wildlife refuge, where i would try to look at the history of it. >> what evidence do you have -- does your publisher have that this kind of book will sell? what is it, $35 apiece? >> when you get it online immediately, i think it's less than that. i think presidential studies does well. and theodore roosevelt is beloved. it's like washington or lincoln. i think people want to read about a president. i wanted to do the book as thoroughly and accurately as

possible. believe it or not, i had to cut a lot just to get it down to a -- i mean, hundreds of pages i've cut just to get it down to a thousand-page book. because it's that rich of a story with that much untapped archival material. i don't write these books -- particularly ones -- i'm not saying i won't do it in my career, but i wrote this book for future generations, because if t.r. is saying he's saving these parks for generation unborn, i want to lay this down as, like, a track for libraries, that every kid will know what happened, that there were battles fought in this country to save these places. they didn't just happen by osmosis. we don't just sort of have wind cave, south dakota saved for no reason, or sites in the south, or places that people love in new mexico saved. each ground site was a battle of whether or not the federal government should have this land or not. each state has a local hero. y