Who's in Charge of America's Public Lands?
One man’s contradictions will decide the fate of America’s public lands.
Let’s get one thing straight: if you had asked a year ago who Trump would pick to run the Department of the Interior in his second term, most conservationists would have expected the worst. We’re talking about a department that controls 480 million acres of public land, oversees the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service—basically, the agencies standing between America’s landscapes and the oil, gas, and mining industries that want to strip-mine them into oblivion. Given Trump’s well-documented disdain for conservation and love for deregulation, the logical choice would have been another industry lapdog eager to privatize public lands and hand out drilling permits like Halloween candy.
And at first glance, Burgum certainly fits that bill.
Burgum, the former governor of North Dakota, is an oil and gas man through and through. His state is a fracking mecca, and he’s …