Public Domain Tami Heilemann/Department of Interior
One year ago, in a stunt to try and hype his Western credentials, Ryan Zinke rode a horse to Interior’s offices for his first day as Interior Secretary. In a statement released that day, he said, “I shall faithfully uphold Teddy Roosevelt's belief that our treasured public lands are 'for the benefit and enjoyment of the people' and will work tirelessly to ensure our public lands are managed and preserved in a way that benefits all Americans for generations to come.”
Sadly, in the year since, Zinke has utterly failed to live up to Interior’s mission to protect America’s public lands and waters for future generations. Instead, he has led the largest rollback of protections for public lands and waters in America’s history.
Based on Zinke’s recommendations, Donald Trump eliminated protections for Bears Ears National Monument and shrank Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument almost in half, making him the first president in our history to try to eliminate a national monument. Zinke also paved the way for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of the world’s last untouched wild places. These areas, along with millions more acres of our public lands in the West and the Arctic, have been put up for auction for the fossil fuel industry to mine, frack, and drill.
Zinke has also proposed a draft offshore drilling plan that would usher in the largest expansion of offshore drilling ever, proposing drilling in nearly every corner of America’s waters, including the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Arctic Oceans. To make matters worse, he is simultaneously working to make it even cheaper for companies to drill in our public waters, as well as trying to make drilling less safe by rolling back safety standards put in place after the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
At the same time that Zinke is clearing the way for dirty fuel interests, he’s implementing policies that threaten to decrease equitable access to the outdoors. In addition to slashing the number of fee-free days at our national parks, Zinke has proposed a plan that would more than double entry fees at the nation’s most popular parks, limiting who can enjoy our parks and undermining the founding idea that these places should be shared by all.
Learn more about all of our public lands and waters that Zinke is trying to attack, sell off, drill, mine, and frack in this video.
All the while, Zinke has taken every possible opportunity to use his position to his own personal advantage, from lavish travel to shady deals that enrich himself and his friends at American taxpayers’ expense.
For as much as he loves to dress like a cowboy and tout his Western bona fides, the last year has made it clear that Zinke is nothing more than a shameless shill for the fossil fuel industry -- and we’re not saying this just because he wears his cowboy hat backwards or rigs his fishing rod wrong. We’re calling him out because the first year of Zinke’s time as Interior Secretary has been characterized not by conservation, but by an all-out assault on the special places that make America great - the very lands that he is charged with protecting.
Send a message urging the Inspector General to investigate Secretary Zinke’s mismanagement of our lands and cultural resources: sc.org/InvestigateZinke
To read more on Ryan Zinke’s rocky year at Interior, check out our recent series:
Part 1: Interior Secretary Zinke: A Series on Selling Out Our Wild America
Part 2: Zinke’s Approach to Public Lands and Waters: Drill More, Protect Less
Part 3: Zinke Bought and Paid For: An Alaska Case Study
Part 4: Ryan Zinke’s Rocky, Scandal-Ridden Year at Interior