The Last of the Hunter-Naturalists: Natalia Holt's The Beast in the Clouds.

 

Photo by George Lu

The Last of the Hunter-Naturalists: Ted and Kermit Roosevelt.

While it seems counterintuitive to us today, many hunters were also conservationists. Theodore Roosevelt and his sons, Ted and Kermit Roosevelt, were some of the last hunter-naturalists. 

Hunter-naturalists believed the only way to study, and ultimately conserve a species, was to hunt and shoot specimens. 

A rifle gifted to Theodore Roosevelt displayed in the National Museum of American History’s 2020 exhibit, “Elephants and Us”, exemplifies this paradox. The rifle was given to Roosevelt for “his services on behalf of preservation of species.”

Theodore Roosevelt is known for conserving 230 million acres of federal land — turning the lands into preserves, refuges, and national parks. He was also an avid hunter who passed that tradition on to his sons, Ted Jr., Kermit, Archibald, and Quentin.  

Roosevelt Sr. was well-known for hunting big game — elk, bear, elephant, cougar, buffalo, yet he was also known for advocating “fair play.” He famously refused to shoot a bear in Mississippi because it was tied to a tree. Roosevelt Sr. considered it unsportsmanlike to shoot a bear that was unable to run or defend itself. 

Ted and Kermit Roosevelt, who are eager to prove themselves after several personal and financial scandals, embark on a mission to find China’s mystical black and white bear. In order to study it, they will shoot, skin, and mount the animal in a museum. 

Before the invention of tranquilizers, GPS tracking devices, and satellites, capturing and killing an animal was the only practical way to study a species. Naturalists like Charles Darwin and John James Johns routinely killed their animal subjects to study them. 

The Beast in the Clouds by Nathalia Holt (2025)

During the 1928 trip to Asia, the Roosevelt brothers and their party collect unusual sheep and deer specimens e.g. Marco Polo sheep, bharal, and serow. In fact, Nathalia Holt writes in her 2025 book on the exploration that the party collected 5,000 bird skins, 2,000 small mammals, and 40 large mammals. 

Surprisingly, until 1869, the Westerners had not even heard of a panda. The animal first became known to the West when Armand David, a missionary who was proselytizing in China, sent a Panda skin to Paris. David called the specimen a beautiful black and white bear. 

The Chinese, however, considered the panda sacred. Though panda were elusive and rarely seen, early Chinese Emperors believed pandas were supernatural beings that could ward off evil spirits and natural disasters. Killing the panda or “beishung” was unthinkable to the Chinese. 

In modern times, the Chinese call the Giant Panda or “daxiongmao” and it has become a cultural symbol. In the past, though, it was associated with many myths. Because the panda was elusive, it was mysterious and associated with mythological beings — Mo, a black-and-white bear that could eat metal or shitieshou, another iron-eating beast.

To help secure a panda, the Roosevelt recruit hunters from the Yolo region. These local hunters, however, were not only inexperienced, they also feared killing a “beishung.” They did not fear the bear’s aggression so much as they feared killing a sacred animal.

The brothers had already undergone too many trials to let that stop them. They had faced the drudgery through the “Valley of death,” close scrapes with bandits, life-threatening illnesses, and the constant danger of being caught up in China’s war between the Kuomintang and the Communists. 

The panda specimen should have been the culmination of the expedition; yet, for the Roosevelt brothers, it was anticlimactic. Shortly after killing the bear, the brothers became downcast. As they prepare to ship the panda home to the Field Museum, news of the hunting party’s success creates a panda craze in the United States. 

For the Roosevelt brothers, life would never be the same. For them, the great bear hunt and hunting, in general, is over. They would give speaking tours but would feel haunted by the expedition and its unintended consequences. Hunters want to use the brothers’ maps of the panda’s territory to bring home more panda carcasses or live cubs.

Before his death, Kermit works for a zoological society. He successful saves the Galapagos tortoise from extinction and calls for a complete ban on panda exports to the United States.

For more about Ted and Kermit Roosevelt’s life after the expedition, read Nathalia Holt’s The Beast in the Clouds.

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April is Poetry Month

A friend posted this to her FB page and I thought it was not only perfect for poetry month but for writing in general.

We are gatherers,

the ones who pick up sticks and stones
and old wasp’s nests fallen by the
door of the barn,
walnuts with holes that look like
eyes of owls,
bits of shells not whole but lovely
in their brokeness,
we are the ones who bring home
empty eggs of birds
and place them on a small glass shelf
to keep for what? How long?
It matters not. What matters
Is the gathering,
the pockets filled with remnants
of a day evaporated, the traces of
certain memory, a lingering smell,
a smile that came with the shell.

~ Nina Bagley

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Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful by Arwen Elys Dayton.

 

Comprised of six loosely interconnected stories, Dayton’s Stronger, Faster and More Beautiful gives young adult readers a horrifying glimpse into the future of genetic research. The stories grow increasingly dark and complex until the last one that ends with a glimpse of redeeming hope.

In the first story, a twin is tricked into accepting a surgery that will make uses of his comatose twin’s healthy organs. He states unequivocally, “I wake up and know that my parents have tricked me, or rather, that they had the nurses drug me.”

In another story, a girl becomes traumatized after her romantic interest, Gabriel learns she has been genetically modified. A modified heart, artificial skin and a “meshline” has been added to her body. Betrayed by Gabriel and ostracized at school, Ludmilla exacts a terrible revenge on her persecutor.

These modifications, though protested by Rev. Tad Tadd’s followers, are more or less medical procedures. In the later stories, the ethical line between beneficial and deleterious procedures are further blurred.

In the third story or “part” called “The Reverend Mr. Tad Tadd’s love Story,” a girl learns that her father, the Reverend Tad Tadd has reversed course. When it was convenient to him, after losing his wife and son, he embraces the genomic technologies he railed against.

The procedures have become monstrous, and they are sometimes done without the individual’s consent. Plus, as Elsie points out its a convenient about-face for her Dad: “You’ve changed your mind now because someone you loved died. But — but — kids in hospitals…they’ve been dying all along.”

The modifications have become even more extreme in Part 4. An experiment to increase a boy’s intelligence has gone horribly wrong. His parents abandon him to a clinic which then transfers him to another clinic in Greece. His intelligence cannot be used for any practical purpose and his body has been exploited for the clinic’s cause.

In Part 5, a dying boy’s parents make a drastic decision — to have him cryogenically frozen so that a lifesaving procedure may be available for him at a later time. Unbeknownst to them, when he awakens he is transformed into a living machine — a slave used to mine platinum from asteroids. Worst of all, the world is facing a new crisis — a Genome War.

In Part Six called “Curiosities” humans have modified themselves to the point of having wings and other vanities. They leave “Protos” on reservations, human beings who have not been modified, in order to study them. Eventually, the modified humans begins falling apart — their wings, jaws, and other modifications begin crumbling. Despite threats from a new group, the Naturalists, two Protos bravely enter the humans’ cities and choose to make a home there.

Moreover, this novel shows that advanced in genomic technology brings both life-saving cures and the seeds for humanity’s destruction.

https://medium.com/@chantal.walvoord