his brother, De Forest Grant, took part in the 1894 electoral campaign of New York mayor William Lafayette Strong. Conservation efforts Thomas C. Leonard wrote that "Grant was a cofounder of the American environmental movement, a crusading conservationist who preserved the California redwoods; saved the American bison from extinction; fought for stricter gun control laws; helped create Glacier and Denali national parks; and worked to preserve whales, bald eagles, and pronghorn antelopes." Grant was a friend of several U.S. presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover. He is credited with saving many natural species from extinction, and co-founded the Save the Redwoods League with Frederick Russell Burnham, John C. Merriam, and Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1918. He is also credited with helping develop the first deer hunting laws in New York state, legislation which spread to other states as well over time. He was also a developer of wildlife management; he believed its development to be harmonized with the concept of eugenics. Grant helped to found the Bronx Zoo, build the Bronx River Parkway, save the American bison as an organizer of the American Bison Society, and helped to create Glacier National Park and Denali National Park. In 1906, as Secretary of the New York Zoological Society, he lobbied to put Ota Benga, a Congolese man from the Mbuti people (a tribe of "pygmies"), on display alongside apes at the Bronx Zoo. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, he served on the boards of many eugenic and philanthropic societies, including the board of trustees at the American Museum of Natural History, as director of the American Eugenics Society, vice president of the Immigration Restriction League, a founding member of the Galton Society, and one of the eight members of the International Committee of Eugenics. He was awarded the gold medal of the Society of Arts and Sciences in 1929. In 1931, the world's largest tree (in Dyerville, California) was dedicated to Grant, Merriam, and Osborn by the California State Board of Parks in recognition for their environmental efforts. A subspecies of caribou was named after Grant as well (Rangifer tarandus granti, also known as Grant's Caribou). He was an early member of the Boone and Crockett Club (a big game hunting organization) since 1893, and he mobilized its wealthy members to influence the government to conserve vast areas of land against encroaching industries. He was the head of the New York