The earliest effort to set aside an area of Federally owned land specifically for wildlife occurred in 1868 when President Ulysses S. Grant took action to protect the Pribilof Islands in Alaska as a reserve for the northern fur seal. In 1869, the Congress formally enacted legislation for this purpose. These remote islands in the Bering Sea were the site of the world's largest rookery of this commercially valuable animal, and the Federal government was prompted in its action primarily due to interest in obtaining revenue from the management of the fur resource. Fundamentally, this action marked a formal recognition of the need to protect and manage wildlife resources for their renewable values.