Theodore Roosevelt and Conservation
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Many resources were being used and America was slowly being destroyed and polluted. Far-visioned leaders saw that such a squandering of the nation's birthright would have to stop, or America would sooner than later become despoiled dearth. The first step to conservation was the Desert Land Act of 1877 under which the federal government sold dry land cheaply on the condition that the person who bought it would irrigate the dry soil within three years. Under this act, forty million acres of trees were saved from lumbermen and was preserved for prosperity. The Carey Act then distributed land to the states on the condition that it be irrigated and settled. There were more acts that were passed to help the land. Roosevelt wanted to preserve the nation's forests. Under Roosevelt's professional foresters and engineers developed a policy of "multiple use resource management." They sought to combine recreation, sustained-yield logging, watershed protection, and summer stock grazing on the same expanse of federal land. Conservation was Roosevelt's most enduring and tangible achievement. The picture on the right is Roosevelt and John Muir, on Glacier Point that is on the rim of Yosemite Valley. This shows that he cared about nature as the naturalists did too.