Roosevelt IV Seeks to Balance Complexities of Politically Charged Landscape

Ted Roosevelt IV joked that the best thing about the Endangered Species Act was that it protected his existence as a Republican.

“I remain a very disenchanted member of the GOP,” the great-grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt told a group of students at Montana State University. “We have failed you in a colossal manner. No other country in the world does what we do in setting aside public lands. We are trustees on your behalf, and we’re allowing a political system to endanger your bequest. That’s intergenerational theft.”

During his September 9 visit to Bozeman, Roosevelt did not recount his Republican ancestor’s accomplishments in protecting public forests and parks, restoring wildlife populations and fighting corporate exploitation of national resources. In his classroom visit and a packed evening lecture in the Hagar Auditorium, he focused on present-day challenges to conservation driven by what he called “an ideologically driven party that has lost its bearings.”

“Today’s party, with its current leadership, will never turn back to conservation,” Roosevelt said. He also accused it of abandoning core Republican principles of respect for science, fiscal responsibility and international relations. However, he saluted Montana’s all-Republican delegation for “drawing a line in the sand” with their refusal to support efforts at selling federal public land in the One Big Beautiful Bill negotiations. That effort, led by Utah Senator Mike Lee, was removed from the final bill shortly before passage in July.

In his discussion with students, the 82-year-old businessman demonstrated the value of seeking out a wide range of experiences. His own include serving in the Navy during the Vietnam War as an officer on Underwater Demolition Team 11, and with the U.S. State Department as a diplomat in Burkina Faso, West Africa.

Roosevelt is currently the managing director of investment banking at Barclays Capital Inc. But he repeatedly called back to how his rural upbringing in Pennsylvania shaped his world view in New York City. The passionate flyfisherman and conservation advocate contrasted how his growing up familiar with guns and eating sharp-tailed grouse he’d shot differed from his wife’s childhood, “in urban America that’s awash in guns but people don’t use them to hunt.” 

Finding a personal connection with nature is essential to conservation, Roosevelt said, whether it is the “feeling of having a trout hit your fly lure that sends a jolt of electricity through you,” or the foundational childhood experiences of visiting a national park for the first time. He encouraged finding ways of helping more people spend time volunteering in public lands to build appreciation for nature.

Inability to talk with others who appear different was the world’s biggest problem, Roosevelt said, whether the difference was urban/rural, conservative/liberal or rich/poor. During the evening lecture, MSU retired history professor Mark Fiege asked how to converse with politically opposed neighbors, noting how out of place he felt as a conservationist in his Madison County home where 75 percent of the voters turned in ballots for Trump.

Roosevelt replied that common ground could be found in almost any relationship. Taking China as an example, he acknowledged the United States had intractable fights over trade and military influence. But the U.S. and China also had shared interests in working together on preventing disease pandemics and mitigating climate change.

“If you asked: Don’t you think we need to do a better job for our children’s children, they wouldn’t agree?” Roosevelt said.

He also criticized the Trump administration’s campaign to eliminate diversity from federal operations. He described how SEAL teams in Afghanistan included women in their units in order to gather intelligence from tribal communities. The women in those units first noticed that many bicycles in the villages were missing seats, and learned from local Afghan women that the seat springs had been repurposed as triggers for improvised explosive devices. The male soldiers, culturally prohibited from speaking to Afghan women, would never have learned that on their own, he said.

“If you asked: Don’t you think we need to do a better job for our children’s children, they wouldn’t agree?”

Theodore roosevelt iv

Roosevelt tacked against some popular environmentalist positions. He noted that many consider the energy company Exxon as the “Darth Vader of climate change,” adding “they did lie for a long time about carbon and the dangers of it.” Nevertheless, he lauded the company’s plans to capture leaking methane gas from oil wells, burn it for energy and store the resulting carbon dioxide pollution in underground salt domes.

“I’m not convinced Exxon will do anything that hurts its bottom line,” Fiege responded.

“If they capture all that carbon, that’s a good thing,” Roosevelt said. “Maybe I’m being naïve, but I think they will do that. They can be a good corporate citizen and still make money.”

Roosevelt also challenged conservationists to bone up on more basic science. While the environmental movement has historically relied on biology to back up its concerns about wildlife and habitat protection, he said it has neglected to develop similar expertise in chemistry and physics.

The result, Roosevelt argued, was an unfounded opposition to nuclear power. That has led to misunderstandings about the potential for innovative fission reactor designs that cool with molten salt, which would be safer than water-cooled designs like the ones that caused huge radiation leaks after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Fukushima, Japan. He also predicted that even safer fusion reactors would be available within a decade.

“We are running short of water,” Roosevelt said. “Texas supports nuclear development because it already sees the need to build desalination facilities to supply its water needs.” Calling climate change an “existential challenge” to human survival, Roosevelt pushed for action on conservation issues large and small. Without quoting President Roosevelt’s famous “Man in the Arena” dictum, the great-grandson exhorted his Bozeman audiences to get personally involved with their government: “For a citizen of this country not to vote is morally wrong and reprehensible.”