Unnamed officials from Trump’s transition team have told several news outlets that Donald Trump has chosen Rep. Ryan Zinke, the freshman Republican Congressman from Montana, to head the Interior Department. It’s one of the most important cabinet posts, with responsibility for oversight of one-fifth of the nation’s land as well as offshore resources. Zinke has not yet made up his mind. A Daily Kos phone call to his office regarding the appointment had not been returned at the time this story was posted.
If Zinke were to take the job, all four Cabinet posts charged with energy and other issues relating to climate change would be filled, with the Congressman arguably being the least bad of the lot, a low hurdle to leap. While Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the supposed front-runner for the post, has a zero percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters, Zinke scores 3 percent. Friends of the Earth Climate Campaigner Marissa Knodel issued a statement:
Zinke is another dangerous pick from Donald Trump. If the task is plundering our public lands on behalf of fossil fuel empires, Rep. Ryan Zinke is the man for the job. Representative Zinke and Donald Trump are determined to turn our public lands and waters into energy sacrifice zones.
Interior’s budget for 2017 is $13.4 billion. Included in the department’s portfolio are nine offices, including the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the National Parks Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. For the past 40 years, every Interior secretary has been a Westerner, three of them from Colorado. None has ever been a Montanan.
Zinke, a third-generation Montanan who was first elected to Congress in 2014, won re-election in November by defeating Democrat Denise Juneau, a 15th or so generation Montanan and a member of the Blackfeet (Siksika) Indian tribe. If he takes the post, a special election will be required to replace him.
The former Navy Seal is, like many Westerners, an avid outdoorsman, both a hunter and fisherman. He’s a denier of climate change, having told the Billings Gazette two years ago: “It’s not a hoax, but it’s not proven science either.” Not so long ago, he was not a denier, having signed a letter in 2010 to President Obama asking that he do something about climate change.
Zinke has gained a reputation as somewhat of a maverick for being the lone Republican voting with Democrats against turning public land over to the states, which would allow it to be sold to private interests. The bill passed despite his vote. He wrote an op-ed in June saying, “I never have voted to give away, sell, or transfer your lands and I never will.”
But his record on that score is tainted, to say the least. In 2012, he signed the Montana Constitutional Governance Pledge, a wacky six-page document that included transferring federal lands to state control. Zinke says he doesn’t remember signing it.
Environmental groups pointed out earlier this year that Zinke voted in favor of a bill to transfer national forest lands to state advisory groups that would apply state and private forestry regulations to their use rather than the National Environmental Protection Act. Those advisory boards would comprise four members each, representing the commercial timber industry, federal grazing program, local county government, and recreational users. Tristan Scott reports:
The groups crying foul included The Wilderness Society, the Montana Wilderness Association, Montana Conservation Voters, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, and the Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, who say both measures constitute overt attempts to undermine public land ownership and strip away environmental protections.
“This would undermine bedrock environmental laws, including the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts, and give extractive industry exclusive control of our national forests,” wrote John Todd, conservation director for the Montana Wilderness Association. “This unprecedented approach to transferring and industrializing public lands would lead to the loss of clean water, wildlife habitat, and recreational use of public lands that are owned by all Americans.”
While Zinke defends his vote for the advisory committees, repeating his stance against no sales or transfers of federal land, he eagerly seeks an expansion of fossil-fuel extraction from those lands:
“Though Mr. Zinke has expressed support for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and opposes the sale of public lands, he has prioritized the development of oil, gas and other resources over the protection of clean water and air, and wildlife,” said Theresa Pierno, president and chief executive of National Parks Conservation Association. “Mr. Zinke has advocated for state control of energy development on federal lands, a move that threatens our national parks.”
In other matters relating to the Interior post, Zinke has shown that any environmental credentials he may claim are weak, at best, probably a selling point for Trump.
He has voted against funding water reclamation and reuse projects, favored the Keystone XL pipeline, voted against raising fees to fund pipeline safety and against holding pipeline owners liable for explosions, voted against more spending for energy conservation measures, scorned renewable energy efforts, opposed EPA regulations on carbon emissions and hazardous air pollution, voted to limit the scope of environmental reviews of private projects, supported cutting the EPA budget by 9 percent, and opposed ending fracking on public land.
Zinke has also opposed raising royalties paid to the government by coal, oil, and gas companies that lease public land.
If Zinke does accept the Interior post, that could be good news for Democratic Sen. Jon Tester. He’s up for re-election next year, and Zinke could prove a formidable foe.