To Love All Birds
The Conservation Legacy of John F. Lacey
In 1900, John F. Lacey stood before Congress, his voice steady and clear.
"I have always been a lover of the birds, and I have always been a hunter as well, for today there is no friend that the birds have like the true sportsman—the man who enjoys legitimate sport."
He spoke from experience. Taught to read by his mother in West Virginia, rising from paperboy to Major in the Union Army, Lacey witnessed America's vanishing wilderness as a railroad lawyer. While others saw progress, he recognized devastating loss.
"The Yellowstone Park is a great educator along the line of protection of wild life," he wrote in the Boston Evening Transcript. "The thousands of tourists who visit the wonderland view the confiding and tame creatures there with as much pleasure as they look upon the periodic display of the Old Faithful geyser."
His response emerged through legislation. The Forest Reserve Act of 1891 gave presidents the power to protect threatened woodlands. The Yellowstone Protection Act of 1894 established the first federal wildlife refuge and created the foundational rules for national park management. His landmark Lacey Act of 1900 struck at the heart of market hunting, prohibiting the interstate shipment of illegally taken wildlife.
In Washington, reports of looting in the Southwest's archaeological sites caught his attention. Dr. Thomas Wilson at the U.S. National Museum documented a steady flow of artifacts into private collections. Anthropologist Edgar Lee Hewett's exhaustive report detailed the scale of the loss. Together, they helped Lacey craft what would become the Antiquities Act of 1906.
The law was deceptively simple — just a few hundred words giving presidents the power to protect "objects of historic or scientific interest." But its impact would reshape the American landscape. Theodore Roosevelt used it eighteen times, protecting places like Devils Tower and the Grand Canyon.
In a letter to Lacey in 1906, Roosevelt wrote, "It has been my privilege to be closely associated with you and to watch the many different ways in which, without any hope or expectation of personal reward, you have rendered efficient public service."
Little was written about Lacey himself — he sought no fame, content to let his legislation speak through protected landscapes.
William T. Hornaday captured Lacey's essence. "To know our birds of song is to love all birds,” he said. “Fortunate indeed were the birds who sang to John F. Lacey, during his boyhood and his young manhood."
Now, over a century later, these protections face new threats. In January 2024, the House of Representatives passed rules declaring public lands — millions of acres of forests, deserts, and mountains — as having zero monetary value when transferred out of federal protection. This bureaucratic maneuver threatens to unravel what Lacey fought to preserve.
The scale of what's at stake would be familiar to him. Since 1906, presidents from both parties have used the Antiquities Act to protect over 150 sites, from vast marine monuments to tiny historic landmarks. Each tells part of America's story — natural wonders, historic battlefields, sacred sites, and pristine wilderness.
Today, rangers patrol where looters once dug. Protected forests still stand where timber barons once threatened. Wildlife populations have rebounded where market hunters once decimated them. These successes stem from Lacey's understanding that some things, once lost, cannot be recovered at any price.
The sun sets behind the Grand Canyon's rim, as it has for millions of years. This view endures because people like Lacey understood the value of preservation. The challenge of our time is to remember this lesson before the next wave of loss begins — not from pot hunters' spades or market hunters' guns, but from the stroke of a legislative pen.
Author's Note: This creative nonfiction story about John Lacey’s conservation work uses verified historical sources. All quotes are directly sourced.
