State of Interior Part I: The “King” with the Silly Flag
“Wizard of Oz” had the “man behind the curtain.” Rudyard Kipling had “The Man Who Would Be King.” In Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, we have both: someone who behaves outwardly like he’s King of All the Land, while also pulling the strings on what has been an unprecedented, relentless attack on the federal agencies, conservation policies, public lands and wildlife he is supposed to defend, manage and conserve.
This week marks the one-year anniversary of Secretary Zinke’s Senate confirmation as the head of the Department of the Interior. And what a long year it’s been for wildlife and public lands. This week, Defenders of Wildlife is marking that inauspicious occasion with a five-part blog series on the “State of Interior.” We will examine what Secretary Zinke’s tenure to date has meant for our natural resources, and for the long-term viability of a Department that is tasked with stewarding hundreds of millions of acres of public lands and protecting our most imperiled species.
Let’s begin with the man himself.
Ryan Zinke: Montanan. Navy SEAL. Novice fly fisherman. Self-proclaimed “Teddy Roosevelt” conservationist. We would have been pleased if that had turned out to be the case, since Roosevelt was the father of federal lands conservation, establishing 150 national forests, 51 wildlife refuges, five national parks and 18 national monuments. Alas, Roosevelt has been rolling in his grave as Zinke has turned his back on just about all that our 26th president stood for.
Secretary Zinke borrowed a horse from the National Park Police to make an entrance on his first day of work. Fortunately, that was a one-time stunt. Unfortunately, treating the Department of the Interior as his own personal fiefdom has become an ongoing theme. Zinke flies his own special secretarial flag above the Interior building when he’s in the office. He flies on taxpayer-funded charter flights when he isn’t. Most regrettably, he also sees his role not as steward of our nation’s public lands, waters and wildlife, but as chief salesman to promote their exploitation.
Over the past year, Secretary Zinke’s leadership has set a tone for the Interior Department that flatly contradicts its mission of conserving habitat and species. The Department of the Interior is home to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is responsible for protecting threatened and endangered species, as well as eagles and migratory birds, and administering the National Wildlife Refuge System. Interior also contains the National Park Service, charged with protecting our nation’s renowned national park system, and the Bureau of Land Management, mandated to provide for sustainable use of the public lands it administers. Together, these agencies manage and conserve hundreds of millions of acres of national wildlife refuges, national parks and preserves, national monuments and historic landmarks, national conservation areas, designated wilderness and Wild and Scenic Rivers, national trails and seashores — and the vast mountain ranges, forests, deserts, grasslands and waterways that define what and who we are as a nation.
Taking his lead from President Trump, Secretary Zinke and his cohorts have flipped Interior’s mission on its head, prioritizing one objective above all others: expanding fossil fuel development on public lands and waters, while eliminating any and all policies and protections that might impede that goal. The Secretary has issued more than a dozen Secretarial Orders and related directives in furtherance of what he and the President Trump call “energy dominance.” A better name would be “fossil fuel domination” — over wildlife, our climate and public lands and waters across the country. In his first year, the Secretary of the Interior has brazenly:
- Ended a moratorium on new federal coal leasing and vastly expanded areas along our coastlines that could be opened to offshore drilling.
- Initiated processes to accelerate permitting for new drilling and mining projects, including offshore where marine mammals and fish could suffer the effects of seismic testing and exploratory drilling as well as any catastrophic oil spill.
- Virtually eliminated “climate change” from the Department’s lexicon, meaning that Interior is no longer supposed to be concerned about either greenhouse gas emissions or the impacts of this urgent threat, which affects wildlife from the deepest oceans to the tops of the tallest mountains.
- Identified and revoked conservation regulations and policies, planning guidance and mitigation requirements as a “burden” on energy development, as though it’s too much trouble to protect birds, prevent species from going extinct, or give communities a voice in projects that impact them.
- Declined advice from scientists and experts on nearly every conceivable topic, from managing wildlife and wild places in the face of climate change, to halting trafficking in international wildlife, to stewarding our national parks and national wildlife refuges.
- Removed protections (or recommended the president do so) from vast expanses of public lands and waters. The clear illegality of this approach has not stopped this administration from lifting restrictions on offshore oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and severely downsizing two national monuments in Utah.
Secretary Zinke has approached his role as both imperious king and the man behind the curtain, giving the orders and pulling the threads as he unravels decades of conservation progress and threatens our natural heritage.
In the second part of our series, we will review in greater detail Interior’s administration of our public lands systems.
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