John F. Lacey: Champion for Birds and Wildlife
Land Acts

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Yellowstone Protective Act of 1894 Is a comprehensive and detailed law providing for the administration of Yellowstone National Park. This act was introduced by Lacey on March 25, 1894. It also established Yellowstone as an inviolate wildlife refuge, the first such refuge in the country. The act was the first legislation to establish definitive national park management rules and it was also the first federal wildlife protection law. This is considered a piece of landmark legislation.

Antiquities Act of 1906 This act allowed "the President to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks...and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated on (federal) land to be national monuments."

Representative Jonathan Dolliver, another Iowan (for whom Dolliver State Park was named), first introduced an antiquities preservation bill on Feb. 5, 1900. Soon it was Lacey who became the "moving spirit" behind this legislation. He grew somewhat weary of continually trying to get Congress to establish national parks. He put his emphasis on this legislation because with it a President could essentially declare an area a national park. It's title would just be different - national monument. In fact, most national parks created by Congress since 1906 were first designated as national monuments by various presidents.

This act was primarily intended to save the prehistoric Indian ruins of the Southwest, but over 200 national monuments, including many large, scenic parklands, have been established. Jimmy Carter used the provisions of the law to set aside 56,000,000 acres in Alaska as national monuments in order to preserve many pristine areas. Lacey would have definitely approved.

Roosevelt declared Devils Tower in Wyoming as the first national monument on Sep. 24, 1906. Effigy Mounds National Monument, Iowa's only "national park", was established by Harry Truman on Oct. 25, 1949 under the provisions of this act.

Three legislative acts have been referred to as the "Magna Carta of American Conservation". These are the Antiquities Act of 1906, Park Service Act of 1916 and Wilderness Act of 1964. This statement indicates the true significance of this "Lacey Act."

For more information about the long-range effects of the “Lacey Act,” see the online version of an article by Richard Sellars, National Park Service Historian, as published in the George Wright Forum (2008). The section about the 1906 Antiquities Act begins on page 73. This article reprint is linked with permission from the George Wright Society.

Forest Reserve Act of 1891 Legislation which permitted the President to set aside federal forest reserves (now called national forests) from the public domain (unsettled federal lands). Lacey helped draft this legislation as a member of the House Public Lands Committee. The act did not define the purposes of the of the reserves however. Subsequently, they were viewed as preserves or parks in which all mining, logging and grazing was prohibited. This created a furor among Western legislators causing problems for the forest reserves program for years to come.

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