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Ryan Zinke: Secy of Interior, SEAL, Man's Man, My Hero Login/Join 
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A Return to the Conservation Ethic
The interior secretary wants to restore the vision of Gifford Pinchot and use public lands ‘for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.’

Kimberley A. StrasselSept. 29, 2017 6:24 p.m. ET

Washington

Amid legislative failure and Twitter tumult, President Trump’s supporters could be forgiven for thinking he’s failed to fulfill his promise of bringing radical change to Washington. But he also appointed a cabinet full of reform-minded conservatives. Ryan Zinke, the former Montana congressman who was confirmed as interior secretary in March, is getting high marks for the speed and scope of his overhaul.

“My first goal is to restore trust with America that we are in fact using our public lands ‘for the benefit and the enjoyment of the people’—not for the very few and the elite,” he told me Monday, using language from the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act of 1872. The Interior Department oversees 500 million acres nationwide—more than one-fifth of the country’s land area—mostly in the West. “We are going to be great stewards of these treasures,” Mr. Zinke says, “but we are also going to restore access to the people and to industry—and be a partner.”

The Interior Department has positioned itself at the forefront of Mr. Trump’s energy revival. It is eliminating or preparing to reverse more than 150 Obama regulations, including those curtailing coal mining and hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking. It has reopened Alaska’s Cook Inlet for business, made 76 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico available for offshore oil-and-gas exploration, and turbocharged pipeline permitting.

On Mr. Trump’s order, the department has reviewed 27 national monuments, which by virtue of that designation can be off-limits to development and to activities such as hunting and fishing. Mr. Zinke has recommended shrinking at least four of them, in line with the Antiquities Act of 1906, which limits the designations to federal land and to the smallest area necessary to protect an actual historical or scientific object.

“I’m grateful the president had the courage to ask the question,” Mr. Zinke says. His review found past administrations had scooped up private land and relied on bogus historical “objects”—in one case, a World War II-era test bombing crater—to justify new designations. “The Antiquities Act has been used not to protect, but to prevent public access and to prevent public use,” Mr. Zinke says. “To make it hard on local cattlemen, who could no longer use machinery to scoop out a pond, or on cross-country skiers, who can’t have trails groomed.”

Mr. Zinke’s office in Washington is a testament to his own lifelong love of the outdoors. In one corner looms a massive stuffed grizzly bear. Two heads, a buffalo and an elk, are mounted over the fireplace. Cowboy hats litter the place, and a sign behind his desk reads: “Yep.” Mr. Zinke arrived for his first day on horseback, instituted a bring-your-dog-to-work day, installed the arcade game Big Buck Hunter in the cafeteria, and even personally shoveled snow at the Lincoln Memorial. But he spends much of his time on the road, exploring federal lands on horseback, in planes and on plows. “As Interior Secretary Swaggers Through Parks, His Staff Rolls Back Regulations,” the New York Times sniffed in a recent headline.

When Mr. Zinke talks policy, he strikes a distinctly populist tone. On his first day in office, he reversed the Obama administration’s last-minute ban on using lead ammunition and fishing tackle on federal lands, an edict he saw as an assault on hunters and anglers of ordinary means, who rely on affordable gear. “This was, again, part of a goal to make hunting and fishing elite, an experience only for the person who can pay for a guide or go a whole week,” Mr. Zinke says. “But it means you limit grandpa, you limit the disabled veteran, you limit the family that goes out for a day to enjoy our public lands.”

Similarly, he sees energy development as a basic way for public lands to benefit the nation. “I never want our children to have to fight overseas for a commodity that we have here,” he says, “especially knowing that we have an energy industry that is the world standard for safety and environmental regulations.” Cheap American energy, he adds, is crucial to lowering U.S. manufacturing costs and boosting workers’ wages.

“Access to our public lands has been limited for industry, even in areas where it is absolutely appropriate,” Mr. Zinke says. “It’s called the National Petroleum Reserve for a reason.” The reference is to the 23 million acres in Alaska that Interior is investigating reopening for drilling after Obama-era restrictions. The department is also working on a new five-year plan for oil-and-gas development in the Outer Continental Shelf, 94% of which is currently off-limits to energy producers. It is issuing coal leases in Wyoming and Utah and streamlining approvals for the construction of the Berwind coal mine on the Virginia-West Virginia border.

“Our regulatory scheme has to be one that holds industry accountable, but that isn’t arbitrary,” Mr. Zinke says. In the past, “not only has our federal government been arbitrary, it has been punitive.” He cites the example of Shell, which spent $10 billion on an Arctic drilling plan “only to be forced into a regulatory box that almost guarantees failure.” Mr. Zinke is unequivocal: “That’s wrong.” His department is trying to prove its good faith by clearing backlogged permit applications and streamlining future projects. Mr. Zinke is also implementing a strictly market-based approach to energy plays, rather than subsidizing costly renewables. “We are for all-of-the-above energy, but the energy itself has to be competitive,” he says. “It isn’t Interior’s role to pick and choose winners.”

All this will generate more revenue that the federal government can use to preserve national treasures for future generations. The Obama administration’s crackdown on energy leases slowed royalties and left the Interior Department with an $11.5 billion infrastructure backlog in the national parks alone. In 2008, Mr. Zinke says, the department pulled in $18 billion in offshore revenue. Last year Interior’s offshore revenues were only $2.6 billion. Even with the drop in oil prices, Mr. Zinke estimates that had drilling continued apace, Interior would have no maintenance backlog today and would instead be making capital investments of $3 billion to $4 billion a year.

Under Mr. Zinke’s leadership, the department has already held more onshore lease sales in six months than in all of last year. From January to June of 2016, Interior generated just $11.5 million from onshore oil and gas. For the same period this year, the figure is $146 million. And Mr. Zinke insists he drives a hard bargain. “We have a royalty committee that we established to make sure the American public is getting value,” he says. “If you are doing commercial work on our public lands, the No. 1 stakeholder is the American public, and they need a fair return.”

Mr. Zinke says his longer-term goal is to make his department a better steward. He brings up President Theodore Roosevelt’s famous 1903 camping trip to Yosemite National Park with the preservationist John Muir : “They went out on this wonderful ride, a ride that you could not even replicate today because of the dead and dying trees.” Mr. Zinke has ordered all his agencies to put a priority on active management against wildfires. “We are spending $2 billion a year fighting fires, money that could be going to far better conservation efforts,” he says, visibly annoyed.

Such mismanagement is what drives Western frustration, which threatens to become a new Sagebrush Rebellion. “Some of the anger is that our grand bargains have been broken, and those bargains said that you had wilderness, but you also have grazing; you could also hunt and fish,” Mr. Zinke says. Now Westerners “watch these catastrophic fires, and they’ve lost any faith that the federal government is capable of being a good steward.”

Mr. Zinke believes the only way for Interior to improve its performance is through a radical overhaul. He plans to devolve far more authority and resources to front-line park and land managers, allowing them to make decisions more quickly and efficiently. “You end up with a park superintendent of 47 years who apparently can’t be trusted with making the grand decision of whether and when locals can collect fiddleheads,” a type of fern, he says. “They’re spending more time behind a desk, less in the field, and they are getting micromanaged.”

The federal bureaucracy also makes it hard for on-site staff to work with state authorities, Indian tribes, and private landowners on solutions that take account of local needs. Mr. Zinke is thinking about moving the headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Reclamation to somewhere out West, perhaps Colorado. “I’m a military guy, so I’m all about putting your assets closer to the fight,” he says with a laugh.

Mr. Zinke’s ambitions extend to the daunting challenge of reforming the way the entire federal government manages its property. “We’ve got to start looking at our lands in terms of complete watersheds and ecosystems, rather than isolated assets,” he says. “We need to think about wildlife corridors, because it turns out wildlife doesn’t just stay on federal lands.”

Even when it does, there often are overlapping jurisdictions. The management of a single stream may involve endangered salmon (overseen by the National Marine Fisheries Service), trout (Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service), a dam (the Army Corps of Engineers), irrigation (Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation), and a nearby forest (the Agriculture Department’s Forest Service). “We can have, and frequently do have, multiple biological opinions that are irreconcilable,” Mr. Zinke says. “That’s us mismanaging our core mission.”

One of Mr. Zinke’s first trips as secretary was to Yellowstone National Park. His first stop was the Roosevelt Arch, whose cornerstone was laid by Theodore Roosevelt in 1903. It is inscribed with that phrase from the law that created the park: “For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People.”

As a vision, that’s pure Gifford Pinchot, who became the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service in 1905, during TR’s presidency. Pinchot was a founder of the conservationist movement, an ardent believer in market forces, and an aggressive proponent of controlled but profitable use of natural resources for the benefit of citizens. Today’s environmental movement—which measures the success of government land management by the number of acres locked away from public use—has largely excised Pinchot from history in favor of Muir.

“But here’s the difference,” says Mr. Zinke. “TR went on a nice ride with Muir. He hired Pinchot. And that’s because Pinchot advocated using science and best practices for management.”

The conservation ethic is where the similarity with Mr. Zinke ends. Pinchot was a scion of a wealthy East Coast family, a Yale Skull and Bones man. Mr. Zinke is all blue-collar Montana—the son of a plumber, an Eagle Scout, a college football player, a geologist, and the first Navy SEAL elected to Congress. His broader political outlook is more libertarian than that of the progressive Pinchot. “I’ve only ever thought there are two things our government should fund absolutely: our military and our parks system,” Mr. Zinke says with a laugh. “The rest is up for discussion.”

Ms. Strassel writes the Journal’s Potomac Watch column.

Appeared in the September 30, 2017, print edition.


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Posts: 18654 | Location: One hop from Paradise | Registered: July 27, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Good read,finally common sense has been appointed
 
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His sights are set just a few blocks to the east of the Department of the Interior.


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Posts: 21057 | Location: Montana | Registered: November 01, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Sounds like my kind of pragmatist.
 
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Had the pleasure of meeting him and his staff and toured the Interior Department. Things are looking up with guys like him in D.C.
 
Posts: 2690 | Location: Baltimore | Registered: October 22, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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He is an Eagle Scout so he loves and respects the outdoors.

Retired SEAL, he can deal with those who don't.
 
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Originally posted by ulsterman:
He is an Eagle Scout so he loves and respects the outdoors.

Retired SEAL, he can deal with those who don't.


He was born and raised in Montana. That's all they have there. Outdoors, I mean.




Luckily, I have enough willpower to control the driving ambition that rages within me.

When you had the votes, we did things your way. Now, we have the votes and you will be doing things our way. This lesson in political reality from Lyndon B. Johnson

"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." - Justice Janice Rogers Brown
 
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Secretary Zinke is looking like one of President Trump's best picks.



Serious about crackers
 
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Can we get a Cabinet full of Zinke's ? This guy is great.
 
Posts: 5157 | Location: Florida Panhandle  | Registered: November 23, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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A watchdog group asked the Interior Department's inspector general on Friday to investigate whether Secretary Ryan Zinke violated the law by chartering private planes for purposes that may represent conflicts of interest.

The Campaign for Accountability, a watchdog group focused on public accountability, asked both the Interior Department's Office of Special Counsel and the inspector general to investigate whether Zinke violated conflict of interest laws and the Hatch Act by using private charter flights to travel for public speaking events, including addressing professional sports teams, as part of his official duties.

"Interior argues that by speaking to a group of highly paid – mostly foreign – athletes, Sec. Zinke was reaching ‘a key audience of people we are trying to target to use our public lands,'" said Daniel Stevens, the group's executive director.

"Shouldn't Sec. Zinke be more focused on American families and how they can benefit from our national lands? Rather than putting America first, Zinke is putting a top donor first," said Stevens.

An agency inspector general office tends to take requests for investigations seriously, and will tell the group whether or not it will procede with an investigation within a specified timeframe.

Politico first reported on Thursday that Zinke chartered private and miltary transport planes at a cost of $12,000. The news broke after Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt was found to have spent $58,000 on private flights. But that is next to nothing when compared to Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price who spent about $1 million in military and private flights. Price resigned on Friday over the allegations.

Cabinet secretaries are required to use commercial airlines for travel, with restrictions on the use of private charter flights and military transportation. Zinke on Friday called the dust up over the flights "a little B.S.," but that was before Price resigned.

The watchdog group pointed out that the Washington Post reported on Thursday that Zinke had taken a private charter plane in June following a "motivational speech" to the Vegas Golden Knights, a National Hockey League team based in Las Vegas, Nev.


The team is owned by Bill Foley, the chairman of Fidelity National Financial, which had been a campaign contributor to Zinke's two congressional races when he served in the House.

"In addition, Fidelity National Financial and affiliates donated $1 million to President Trump's inaugural committee," according to the group.

The group argues that Zinke's trip to Las Vegas to speak to the team, "whose owner has been a major benefactor to both Mr. Zinke and President Trump, seems to be a special favor provided to a major political supporter, in violation of conflict of interest laws."

It added that Zinke's motivational speech may also be considered a "prohibited political activity under the Hatch Act, which bars executive branch employees from engaging in political activity while on duty."

Link




Luckily, I have enough willpower to control the driving ambition that rages within me.

When you had the votes, we did things your way. Now, we have the votes and you will be doing things our way. This lesson in political reality from Lyndon B. Johnson

"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." - Justice Janice Rogers Brown
 
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The 'Yep' sign is a wood plank with the outline of Montana as the background. Yep and other outdoor scenes are carved by a local man who is a lawyer for our Justice Dept. He also has the old go cups we used to buy produced with 'Yep'.

Jon and his wife also have a series of children's books about the life of 'Jack Pants'. Their son was born very premature and has some physical issues. You can find them on FaceBook I think.
 
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I liked this guy ever since he showed up for work on horseback. He's mainly been in the background, although I'm not a big follower of the news, so I may be wrong.

Although I agree completely with his statement that "I’ve only ever thought there are two things our government should fund absolutely: our military and our parks system", the second half of it can't be supported by the constitution. Doesn't matter, I agree with it 100%. (It reminds me of a statement I heard attributed to Bill Clinton, that we all agree we need government, the big question is how much. A very wise observation.)

I do disagree with his position on shrinking Grand Staircase/ Escalante and Bear's Ears. However, in fairness, I'm a desert rat, and would love to see as much of the desert southwest preserved as possible. If it were open to "development", I'm afraid of what would happen - see the "is government corrupt" thread for my fears. On the other hand, oil and gas development has put roads in that open up more remote areas, to those that aren't afraid to travel them.

So you know where I'm coming from, I consider myself an avid outdoorsman, more in the flavor of REI than Cabelas (i.e., a "tree hugger").

Yes, I'm conflicted....




Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.
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"Never go through life saying 'I should have'..." - quote from the 9/11 Boatlift Story (thanks, sdy for posting it)
 
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Good except for the fracking. I highly suspect that with fracking underground aquifers will eventually be contaminated. I would leave fracking alone unless we were in an emergency, such as really running out of oil.

Somewhere in I believe in SoCal, some frackers dumped waste fracking water into an location that was illegal. It totally contaminated a large aquifer and ruined the water. The few and possibly elite saved a few dollars, and the public terrible taken advantage of. People get greedy, and a certain percentage of them are going to dump their waste water where they should not. Contaminating your drinking water with oil, can't get much worse than that.


-c1steve
 
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Originally posted by c1steve:
Good except for the fracking. I highly suspect that with fracking underground aquifers will eventually be contaminated. I would leave fracking alone unless we were in an emergency, such as really running out of oil.

Somewhere in I believe in SoCal, some frackers dumped waste fracking water into an location that was illegal. It totally contaminated a large aquifer and ruined the water. The few and possibly elite saved a few dollars, and the public terrible taken advantage of. People get greedy, and a certain percentage of them are going to dump their waste water where they should not. Contaminating your drinking water with oil, can't get much worse than that.


Illegally disposing of waste water is not confined to frackers. Do you think gold mines, smelters, manufacters and other water users should be similarly banned?


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Okay, good point. However I still think we should hold off on fracking until needed. If one day the world starts running out of oil, we may need to obtain it from any source possible. Hard to pump oil is like money in a savings account.

Oil supply is great now, but no one knows how long it will last.


-c1steve
 
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Originally posted by c1steve:
Okay, good point. However I still think we should hold off on fracking until needed. If one day the world starts running out of oil, we may need to obtain it from any source possible. Hard to pump oil is like money in a savings account.

Oil supply is great now, but no one knows how long it will last.

Are you old enough to remember peak oil? We were going to run out of oil in the '90s. Reserves are larger than ever now. Fracking is safe if done properly and North American production is heavily regulated, not so for much of the rest of the world. Furthermore, less money for the crazies in the middle east, or Venezuela or Russia is always a good thing.


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Originally posted by c1steve:
Okay, good point. However I still think we should hold off on fracking until needed. If one day the world starts running out of oil, we may need to obtain it from any source possible. Hard to pump oil is like money in a savings account.

Oil supply is great now, but no one knows how long it will last.


The world supply of petroleum was going to be exhausted in 1996, according to the forecast I saw as a youth. That dissuaded me from going into the awl biness.

It has also made me aware of the disparity between forecasts and reality.




Luckily, I have enough willpower to control the driving ambition that rages within me.

When you had the votes, we did things your way. Now, we have the votes and you will be doing things our way. This lesson in political reality from Lyndon B. Johnson

"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." - Justice Janice Rogers Brown
 
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Thumbs up!
 
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