FINDINGS.

SEC. 101. FINDINGS. The Congress finds as follows:(1) Yellowstone National Park was established by an Act signed by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872, as the Nation’s first national park.(2) The summer and autumn of 1890 saw the establishment of a number of national sites:(A) August 19: Chickamauga and Chattanooga established as national military parks in Georgia and Tennessee.(B) August 30: Antietam established as a national battlefield site in Maryland.(C) September 25: Sequoia National Park established in California.(D) September 27: Rock Creek Park established in the District of Columbia.(E) October 1: General Grant National Park established in California (and subsequently incorporated in Kings Canyon National Park).(F) October 1: Yosemite National Park established in California.(3) Theodore Roosevelt was this nation’s 26th President and is considered by many to be our “Conservationist President”.(4) As a frequent visitor to the West, Theodore Roosevelt witnessed the virtual destruction of some big game species and the overgrazing that destroyed the grasslands and with them the habitats for small mammals and songbirds and conservation increasingly became one of his major concerns.122 STAT. 5039(5) When he became President in 1901, Roosevelt pursued this interest in conservation by establishing the first 51 Bird Reserves, 4 Game Preserves, and 150 National Forests.(6) He also established the United States Forest Service, signed into law the creation of 5 National Parks, and signed the Act for the Preservation of American Antiquities in 1906 under which he proclaimed 18 national monuments.(7) Approximately 230,000,000 acres of area within the United States was placed under public protection by Theodore Roosevelt.(8) Theodore Roosevelt said that nothing short of defending this country in wartime “compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us”.(9) The National Park Service was created by an Act signed by President Woodrow Wilson on August 25, 1916.(10) The National Park System comprises 391 areas covering more than 84,000,000 acres in every State (except Delaware), the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.(11) The sites or areas within the National Park System vary widely in size and type from vast natural wilderness to birthplaces of Presidents to world heritage archaeology sites to an African burial ground memorial in Manhattan and include national parks, monuments, battlefields, military parks, historical parks, historic sites, lakeshores, seashores, recreation areas, scenic rivers and trails, and the White House.(12) In addition to the sites within the National Park System, the United States has placed numerous other types of sites under various forms of conservancy, such as the national forests and sites within the National Wildlife Refuge System and on the National Register of Historic Places.