Environmental Laws

By hen_le

  • Forest Reserve Act of 1891

    This act gave the President the ability to be able to set land aside for forest reserves from public demand.

  • Lacey Act

    The Lacey Act banned trafficking in illegal wildlife.

  • Antiquities Act

    The Antiquities Act allowed the President to create national monuments from federal lands by presidential proclamation in order to protect significant natural, cultural, or scientific features.

  • Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act

    The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act set up the basic system in the US that regulates pesticides in order to protect applicators, consumers, and the environment.

  • National Park Service

    This act established the National Park Service under the Department of the Interior.

  • Migratory Bird Act

    This act made it illegal for anyone to take, possess, import, export, transport, sell, purchase, barter, or offer for sale, purchase, or barter, any migratory bird, or the parts, nests, or eggs of such a bird without a permit from the government.

  • Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp Act

    The act requires each waterfowl hunter 16 years of age or older to possess a valid Federal hunting stamp.

  • Taylor Grazing Act

    The Taylor Grazing Act that regulates the grazing that is done on public lands (Alaska is an exception to this act). This act was put into place in order to improve rangeland conditions and regulate their use.

  • Water Pollution Control Act

    This was the first Federal Water Pollution Control Act, but it will later be rewritten in 1972. This act created programs that would help eliminate or reduce the pollution of interstate waters and tributaries and improving the sanitary condition of surface and underground waters.

  • International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

    IUCN's vision is for a world that will value and conserve nature. They also keep a list of threatened animals, which is also known as the, "red list."

  • Price-Anderson Act

    This act limits the amount of insurance nuclear power plant owners must carry and caps their liability in the event of a catastrophic accident or attack.

  • Wilderness Act

    The Wilderness Act created the National Wilderness Preservation System. It also recognized wilderness as “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

  • Land and Water Conservation Act

    This act was created to protect our natural areas, water resources, and cultural heritage. It also provided recreation opportunities to all Americans.

  • Resource Recovery Act

    The Resource Recovery Act created a research program that would develop new ways to deal with solid waste.

  • Marine Mammal Protection Act

    This act prohibits the killing of all marine mammals in the US, and the import or export of any marine mammal body parts.

  • Clean Water Act

    This is the latest version of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act. This act is mainly here in order to protect our water's chemical, physical, and biological integrity.

  • CITES

    Convention on Internal Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flore controls the internal trade of threatened plants and animals. There's an international agreement between 175 countries.

  • Endangered Species

    This act was designed in order to protect species from possible extinction.

  • Safe Drinking Water Act

    This act protects the nation's public drinking water supplies. The EPA also set up standards for drinking water quality.

  • Resource Conservation and Recovery Act

    This Act is the federal law that governs over the disposal of solid and hazardous waste.

  • Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980

    This provided a federal "Superfund" to clean up uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous-waste sites as well as accidents, spills, and other emergency releases of pollutants and contaminants into the environment.

  • Clean Air Act

    This was the US's first act to anything regarding air pollution. This act provided federal funds for the research on air pollution.

  • Convention on Biological Diversity

    This established a treaty on the protection of biodiversity, conservation, sustainable use, and to equitably share the benefits that emerge from the commercial use of resources.