President Barack Obama has signed legislation that sets aside more than 2 million acres as protected wilderness, including Michigan's Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.
Obama says the most valuable things in life are those already possessed as he signed a massive public lands management act at the White House.
The president says the legislation protects the land, lakes and shorelines for future generation.
The law -- a collection of nearly 170 separate measures -- represents one of the largest expansions of wilderness protection in a quarter-century. It confers the government's highest level of protection on land in nine states.