Every president since Ulysses S. Grant has had some hand in shaping America’s public lands, but a handful changed the map permanently. They signed the laws, drew the boundaries, and set aside the wild country that tens of millions of people now visit every year. Ranking them is an argument, not a science, and we are happy to make the argument.
Our criteria are simple: acres protected, laws enacted, durability of the legacy, and genuine conviction. By those measures, here are the ten greatest conservation presidents in American history, counting up to the one we think stands above the rest. You will notice the list crosses party lines repeatedly, which is the whole point. For most of the twentieth century, protecting land was a bipartisan project.
10. Ulysses S. Grant
Grant earns his place for a single act of historic consequence. On March 1, 1872, he signed the law establishing Yellowstone, the first national park in the United States and, by most accounts, the first national park anywhere in the world. The idea that the federal government should hold spectacular land in trust “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people” started with Grant’s signature.
It was a radical concept at the time, and nearly every protected acre that followed traces back to the precedent set in 1872. He ranks tenth not for breadth but for being first.
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9. Bill Clinton
Clinton was an aggressive user of the Antiquities Act, the 1906 law that lets a president protect federal land by proclamation. He designated or expanded more than a dozen national monuments, most famously the 1.7-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah in 1996.
His most far-reaching move came at the very end of his presidency: the Roadless Area Conservation Rule of January 2001, which barred road building and most logging across roughly 58 million acres of national forest. It is one of the largest land-protection measures in American history, and it has survived more than two decades of legal and political assault.
8. Woodrow Wilson
Wilson’s contribution is administrative, but it is the foundation everything else rests on. In 1916 he signed the Organic Act, creating the National Park Service to manage the parks and monuments that had been accumulating with no coherent steward.
Before the NPS, the parks were a scattered collection run by whoever happened to be available, including the Army. Wilson’s signature gave them a professional agency, a mission, and the institutional permanence they have today. He also added several parks and monuments during his two terms, but the Park Service itself is his monument.
7. John F. Kennedy
Kennedy reopened a conversation the country had let lapse since the New Deal. He appointed Stewart Udall as Secretary of the Interior, the single best conservation hire of the century, and in 1962 he convened the first White House Conference on Conservation in decades.
His most durable achievement was setting in motion the Land and Water Conservation Fund, signed into law in 1965 after his death. It has since paid for land protection in nearly every county in the country. Kennedy’s presidency was cut short, but he relit the conservation movement and handed it to people who carried it much further.
6. Barack Obama
By one important measure, Obama protected more acreage than any president in history. The reason is the ocean: his expansion of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument off Hawaii and the creation of vast marine reserves in the Pacific put hundreds of millions of acres of ocean off limits to extraction.
On land he used the Antiquities Act more than two dozen times, protecting places like Bears Ears in Utah and a string of monuments that deliberately broadened the story the parks tell, honoring civil rights history, labor history, and Indigenous heritage. He launched the Every Kid in a Park program and treated climate change as a central concern. His critics note that much of the marine acreage faced little competing use, which is fair, but the scope of his record is undeniable.
5. Lyndon B. Johnson
The Johnson years produced a torrent of environmental law. With Stewart Udall at Interior and First Lady Lady Bird Johnson championing the cause from inside the White House, LBJ signed the Wilderness Act of 1964, the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and the National Trails System Act, along with dozens of new park units.
In total, his administration enacted close to 300 conservation and beautification measures. The Wilderness Act alone, which created a legal category for permanently protected roadless land, places him among the most consequential conservation presidents the country has had.
4. Richard M. Nixon
Place conviction aside and judge by results, and Nixon’s environmental record is one of the strongest of any president. He created the Environmental Protection Agency, signed the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act of 1970, and the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and saw the Clean Water Act become law over his own veto.
The complication, which we explore at length in our piece on Nixon’s environmental legacy, is that he was no environmentalist at heart. He signed these laws because public pressure in the early 1970s was overwhelming and bipartisan. That he ranks this high anyway is a testament to what got built on his watch, and to an era when the politics demanded it.
3. Franklin D. Roosevelt
FDR fused conservation with economic recovery in a way no one had attempted before. His Civilian Conservation Corps, created in 1933, put roughly three million young men to work planting an estimated three billion trees, fighting erosion, and building the trails, lodges, and campgrounds that still define the national parks experience today.
He also expanded the park system substantially, helping establish or enlarge Olympic, Kings Canyon, and Grand Teton, and he began the slow work of desegregating federal recreation areas. His personal love of land and forestry was genuine, rooted in his own tree farm at Hyde Park. The CCC’s infrastructure alone makes him one of the most physically present conservation presidents in the parks we visit now.
2. Theodore Roosevelt
For most people, Theodore Roosevelt is the conservation president, and the numbers explain why. During his presidency he placed roughly 230 million acres under federal protection, an area larger than Texas. He established five national parks, 18 national monuments, 150 national forests, and the first 51 federal bird reservations, the seed of the national wildlife refuge system.
His most powerful tool was the Antiquities Act of 1906, which he used to protect the Grand Canyon as a national monument when Congress would not act. He camped in Yosemite with John Muir, leaned on foresters like Gifford Pinchot, and made conservation a defining cause of his presidency. If the standard is breadth of land protected, no one tops him.
Related: Theodore Roosevelt National Park Facts
1. Jimmy Carter
This is where we part company with conventional wisdom, and we will defend it. Our pick for the greatest conservation president is Jimmy Carter.
In December 1980, Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the single largest expansion of protected land in American history. ANILCA set aside roughly 157 million acres, more than doubling the size of the national park system and tripling the national wilderness system in one stroke. It created or enlarged Gates of the Arctic, Wrangell-St. Elias, Kenai Fjords, and a dozen other crown jewels. Carter spent enormous political capital to get it done, and it cost him in Alaska.
The case for Carter rests on more than acreage. He grasped the threat of climate change earlier than any president, commissioning studies and putting solar panels on the White House roof. And his conservation conviction was lifelong, not political; he was still hiking, fishing, and speaking for public lands well into his nineties.
Why Carter Stands Above The Rest
Theodore Roosevelt protected more total acres across the lower country, and the temptation is always to crown him. But Carter’s Alaska act protected the largest, wildest, most intact ecosystems left on the continent, and it remains under threat from drilling interests to this day, which makes its defense a living legacy rather than a settled one. Roosevelt acted in an age that welcomed conservation. Carter acted against the grain of his own era and paid for it. For us, that combination of scale and conviction puts him first. Read our full case in Jimmy Carter Was the Greatest Conservation President.
About The People Behind More Than Just Parks
You should probably know that this does not come out of thin air. We love America’s public lands, and my sons Will and Jim have spent their entire adult lives bringing these places to life through their films.
Will and Jim have worked with the National Park Service, the Department of the Interior, the USDA, and the U.S. Forest Service for years, creating films about important places and issues. Their work has been featured in publications around the world, and a few people outside our immediate family even call them experts on the national parks.
In 2018, having spent a lifetime teaching history, I joined More Than Just Parks to help tell the stories behind these remarkable places.
