Lacey Act Turns 100

The first American wildlife conservation law celebrates a century in force this year. The Lacey Act, authored by a Republican Congressman from Iowa named John Fletcher Lacey, prohibits the interstate and international trade in illegally taken wildlife.

In 1999 alone, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service was involved in 1,476 Lacey Act cases. Some of these cases included illegal importation of reptile-skin boots, interstate trafficking of jaguar and ocelot mounts, and illegal hunting of deer, elk, and antelope.

According to the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, Lacey’s daughter “remembered her father as always having had a great love for the outdoors and that it pained him to see the increasing degree of wanton destruction of forests and wildlife in the late 1800s.” This year, the Iowa General Assembly passed a resolution honoring Lacey. It says in part: “no person better represents the model of a citizen conservationist than John Fletcher Lacey, and no act better represents the progress made in conservation of the environment in the last century than the Lacey Act.”