Ryan Zinke Is Sabotaging Our Best Public Lands Program
Way back in 1962, with World War II–generation parents eager to pack their baby boomer children into the station wagon and hit the open road for family adventure, President John F. Kennedy called for the creation of a fund that would siphon federal offshore oil revenues into projects to improve access to public land and water. The basic idea was that if the country was going to permit environmentally destructive activities like oil and mineral extraction, we at least ought to use a portion of the public revenues to preserve land and get people outdoors.
In response to Kennedy’s request, Congress created the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) in 1965. In the years since, it has become “the single most important program for protecting threatened access and opening up new access that the government has,” according to Whit Fosburgh, president of the Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, a nonpartisan group devoted to safeguarding critical wildlife habitat and guaranteeing all Americans quality places to hunt and fish.
As a Montana congressman prior to taking his cabinet post as secretary of the interior, Ryan Zinke was the only Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee to vote for permanent reauthorization of the program when it was set to expire in 2015. As I mentioned in my profile of Zinke, he said at the time that he would make it a personal mission to win his Republican colleagues over to supporting LWCF.
“I know what is at stake if we lose this critical resource. This isn’t about politics; it’s about Montana. It’s time Congress gets on board,” Zinke said. But now that he’s no longer an elected office holder, it appears Zinke’s romance with the LWCF has ended. As secretary, he testified earlier this month in support of a budget that reduces LWCF funding to $8.1 million—roughly one-fiftieth of its 2018 allocation of $425 million, and less than 1 percent of its maximum allotment of $900 million.
Grilled by Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) about the discrepancy, Zinke said, “The budget is a proposal, and this is where the two branches come together and discuss priorities.” In other words, Zinke seemed to be saying, Don’t take this budget seriously. What he did not do, however, is vigorously defend the LWCF and restate his earlier belief that the program should be permanently reauthorized and fully funded—a position he stood by as a junior congressman, even when it meant pissing off his committee chairman, Utah Republican Rob Bishop.
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