It's a famous photo: President Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir are posed together on the overlook at Glacier Point in 1903. Roosevelt stares directly at the camera, looking like he wants to bust a bronco and play a polo match at the same time. Muir, dressed like a well-heeled hobo, gazes off toward the mountains. It was during this three-night camping trip in Yosemite that Muir persuaded Roosevelt that his beloved Yosemite should be a national park -- protected and managed by the federal government for all Americans.
It's too bad we don't still lobby presidents that way because the results were stupendous. By the time Roosevelt left office six years later, he'd helped create 150 national forests, five national parks, and 18 national monuments -- an unparalleled legacy of lands protection for an American president. And for the next hundred years, that legacy served us well.
Now, though, it's time for an update, and that's exactly what the Obama administration has been working on for most of the past year. The interagency initiative is called "America's Great Outdoors," and the first published report on their work is subtitled: "A Promise to Future Generations." A lot of it talks about ways to strengthen and deepen the connection that Americans have with the outdoors -- something Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir would enthusiastically have endorsed. But the report also digs deep into how we can best conserve our nation's incredible natural heritage in a world that neither Muir nor Roosevelt could ever have imagined.
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