, florida, and i went to pelican island, florida, he's near vecero beach. and you can't walk on it because you could step on birds' nest. the island, for example, there are many like this off our coast, but pelican island, for example, pelicans would come and they would breed in, you know, nest there, and so they'd all be in a cluster. but the millenary institute, women's fashion during the gilded age wanted feathers for women's hats. they wanted, you know, egret feather or a herring feather, et cetera. and so people would come and just gun them all down. and you were massacring birds. there would be heaps of dead birds just for a feather. and we were losing species in florida. wild florida, i mean, you think that the west was wild, florida was the last untamed place down around the swamps of the ev everglades and places, these were a lot of ex-con fed rats on the lam, people that couldn't stand the federal government with civil war memories. and 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 i

but i would send individual to paul tritek down in florida who used to run pelican island and he now runs ding darling and i sent him my pelican chapters, and if he didn't have answers he had two guys down there look into it. and if i went to, you know, you get the idea, donald worster who wrote the recent biography of john muir is the expert on reclamation projects and roosevelt made a lot of mistakes i think in building some dams he shouldn't have, trying to bring electricity to the west. it's controversial and it's a big part of my book, reclamat n reclamation, and donald worster is the national expert on the arid west, so i would send donald worster my chapters and say can you give me some feedback, what did i do wrong. everybody i sent a chapter to, i got something wrong. sometimes it's a word change. i say winds blew frommet southeast and it can't be the southeast, it's the northeast. that micro thing in particularly with my ornithology, i'm a bird lover and an amateur but i would send it to oaudubon specialists on birds to make sure i'm not misidentifying a bird species, becaus

on pelican island, florida. and about how he started saving wild florida. and -- >> that would have been in 2005? >> yeah, even before, i started writing i have been collecting on this for my files and going to these places since the 90s. >> you wrote the pro log in pelican island? >> i did. visited with with paul, a guy that works for u.s. fish and wildlife, took me on the boat. one of the neat things with the u.s. fish and wildlife is that when i visit places, they were so excited i was interested in the history of that national wild life refuge, they would take me to see -- i had people take me to watch sea turtles, i went at night with the great expert and watch them lay eggs after they lay their eggs they move in the ocean. felt like the birth of mankind, it was like biblical to watch these turtles interact. when i would go there i was. look at documents, i was trying to ser yens some of the wildlife -- >> in and around that, when did do you the gerald ford book? >> ford i did for the arthur schlessinger, jr. signed me up for the seaseries, that came o