America’s “Best Idea”

Sean Mahoney, executive vice president, director of programs, and director of Conservation Law Foundation’s Maine Advocacy Center, discusses the Antiquities Act. Writer Wallace Stegner called National Parks the “best idea [America] ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.” The National Park Service celebrates its centennial this year but it is a less well-known law, the Antiquities Act, that has been the genesis of not only more than 25 percent of the National Parks but most of the lands set aside over the last three decades.