A Brief History of the Public Land Concept

Since 1788, Article IV, Section 3, clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution has given Congress the authority to acquire and manage federal property. Today, that includes roughly 640 million acres of land, nearly 28 percent of the 2.3 billion acres in 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Just four federal land management agencies administer 606 million acres (95 percent) of these federal lands. The U.S. Forest Service manages 193 million acres in the National Forest System, the Bureau of Land Management manages 245 million acres, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manages 89 million acres as part of the National Wildlife Refuge System, and the National Park Service manages 80 million acres in the National Park System.

Early Club members like Theodore Roosevelt, Stephen Mather, and Gifford Pinchot played leading roles in the creation of these public lands and the agencies that manage them. What follows is an abbreviated timeline of what a handful of Club members accomplished in the early days of the world’s first conservation movement.

Key Milestones in Public Land By Early Members of the Boone and Crockett Club

1887—Boone and Crockett Club Formed
Founded by Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell, the Boone and Crockett Club’s early members also included artist Albert Bierstadt, General Philip Sheridan, General William Tecumseh Sherman, and other notable figures of the period.

1894—Yellowstone Game Protection Act
Boone and Crockett member John F. Lacey, an enthusiastic supporter of Yellowstone, introduced the Yellowstone Park Protection Act. Lacey was disgusted by reports of market hunters destroying the park’s big-game populations. Lacey’s 1894 act established Yellowstone as an inviolate wildlife refuge, the first in the country, and it provided for armed law enforcement. It was the first law establishing definitive national park management rules, and it was also the first federal wildlife protection law.

1897—National Forest System
Introduced to Congress by Club member John F. Lacey, the Organic Administration Act established the forest reserve system in the United States to supply timber to the country. The forest reserve system was a precursor to the establishment of the Forest Service in 1905.

Congressman John F. Lacey in August, 1906.

1903—National Wildlife Refuge System
Florida’s Pelican Island became our first national wildlife refuge. California Senator and Club member George C. Perkins used research provided by Boone and Crockett to help push the National Wildlife Refuge System Act through Congress. Key Club members involved were Alden Sampson, Dr. Ed W. Nelson, and U.S. Senator George C. Perkins.

1905—U.S. Forest Service
Proposed by Club member Gifford Pinchot (first chief of the U.S. Forest Service), the Forest Reserves Transfer Act established the U.S. Forest Service by transferring the forest reserves from the Department of Interior to the Department of Agriculture. Club members Pinchot, C. Hart Merriam (Chief of the U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey), T.S. Palmer, U.S. Congressman John F. Lacey, and President Theodore Roosevelt were all instrumental in this legislation’s success.

1906—Antiquities Act and National Monuments
The Antiquities Act gave the president the power to protect key areas of historical and archeological importance and set aside places that were simply awe-inspiring—without Congressional approval. These places would be called national monuments, and President Theodore Roosevelt was happy to set them aside. Every subsequent president has followed suit. President Theodore Roosevelt set aside 18 national monuments, including many that became national parks, such as Crater Lake, Grand Canyon, Zion, Olympic, and Lassen Volcanic National Park. In places like the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument (established by President Bill Clinton in 2001), hunters lucky enough to draw an elk tag can hunt massive bulls. This unique landscape in central Montana is managed by the Bureau of Land Management, which manages 29 national monuments across the western U.S. and Alaska.

The Virgin River winds its way through Zion Canyon in Zion National Park.

1910—Glacier National Park
First surveyed and proposed by Club member George Bird Grinnell, Glacier National Park was officially designated when President William Howard Taft signed the legislation into law. Integral to the process were Club members Professor Raphael Pumpelly, Henry S. Graves, U.S. Senator Thomas B. Carter and Chief of the U.S. Forest Service Gifford Pinchot.

1916—National Park Service
President Woodrow Wilson established the National Park Service by signing the Organic Act of 1916. This legislation wouldn’t have happened without the marketing genius of Club member Stephen T. Mather, who held his famous Mather Mountain Party, which invited just about anyone who had influence and an interest in the outdoors on a camping trip in California. Mather was appointed National Park Service’s first director, and lub member Horace M. Albright took over when Mather left.

1917—Mount McKinley (Denali) National Park
Club member Charles Sheldon originally campaigned and surveyed the area around Alaska’s Mount McKinley to protect Dall’s sheep. Legislation that designated the park’s boundaries was then written by Club members, who also helped secure passage of the Mount McKinley National Park Act, now Denali National Park. Chief of the U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey Dr. Ed. W. Nelson, Stephen T. Mather, and Belmore Browne also played leading roles in its creation.

Denali National Park

1934 – Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act
This law gave the then-U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey, a predecessor of the USFWS, the authority to evaluate the potential impacts on fish and wildlife from proposed water resource development projects. It also requires that wildlife conservation be considered equal to other water resource development programs, and created the Division of Game Management for federal wildlife law enforcement. This set the stage for USFWS to be created administratively, and moved to the Interior Department, in President FDR’s broader government reorganization effort.

1960 — Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act
This law first directed the management of national forests for multiple uses—to produce a sustained yield of products and services and for other purposes. It defined the purposes of national forests as outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, and fish and wildlife. The act also directs the Secretary of Agriculture to administer national forest renewable surface resources for multiple uses and sustained yield, a principle that still resonates through federal land planning and management today.

Aldo Leopold in the upper peninsula of Michigan in 1938.

1964—Wilderness Act
With help from Club spokesman and Member Aldo Leopold, B&C worked with other conservation groups to pass the National Wilderness Preservation Act. At the time, the act placed nine million acres into wilderness protection, which prohibits mechanized travel, among other restrictions. Today, there are 803 wilderness areas covering more than 111.7 million acres that are part of the National Wilderness Preservation System, which is managed by the Forest Service and three other federal land management agencies.

1964—Present Day
After Boone and Crockett Club members created the agencies that manage our nation’s public land and wildlife, they worked (and still work) with agencies to implement active land management policies and to help those agencies secure the funding necessary to get work done on the ground.

Club members also played a substantive role in creating and implementing the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act of 1966, the Federal Land Policy & Management Act and the National Forest Management Act, both of 1976, the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997, the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act of 2000, and most recently the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) of 2020. The GAOA had two major components, the first being the establishment of the National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund to address the deferred maintenance and repair on public lands. The second component established permanent and full funding for the existing Land and Water Conservation Fund of $900 million annually—a decades-long goal of Club members and other conservationists.

From habitat stewardship and restoration to wildlife research and management, Club members work with all lawmakers to put habitat first. Further, the Club continues to lead the way in innovative forest and rangeland management on our federal public lands—for hunters, wildlife, and generations to come. 

Public land map courtesey of GISGeography.com.