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The Interior Department won’t be removing monuments to Confederate soldiers at national battlefields that are “an important part of our country’s history,” according to a spokesman. “The National Park Service is committed to safeguarding these memorials while simultaneously educating visitors holistically and objectively about the actions, motivations and causes of the soldiers and states they commemorate,” spokesman Jeremy Barnum told E&E News. National Park statements come after a woman was killed counter-protesting a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. The city voted to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Monday announced the federal government will relax Obama-era rules designed to protect the imperiled sage grouse, saying the administration will offer states flexibility in how they choose to protect the bird and also will loosen restrictions on energy development in sage grouse habitat. In a statement issued in response to a lengthy report from Interior’s sage grouse review team, Mr. Zinke said the recommendations will go into effect immediately.

Science centers that were supposed to be the “cornerstone” of the Department of the Interior’s “climate change response strategy” don’t have the proper controls in place to prevent wasteful spending, according to an internal audit. The inspector general’s office found Interior Department’s climate science centers (CSC) and landscape conservation cooperatives (LCC) could be wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on duplicative research grants. “We found that CSCs and LCCs had no formal process to coordinate the prevention of duplication in research grants, which could limit accessibility of information by Federal, State, local, and private-sector decisionmakers and place DOI at increased risk...

President Trump’s newly installed agency heads are starting to take a lead role unraveling a web of Obama-era regulations, acting alongside congressional Republicans and the president himself to roll back rules they claim hurt business or simply go too far. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was the latest to peel back red tape. On his first day of work, for which he arrived Teddy Roosevelt-style on horseback, Zinke ended a ban on lead bullets and fishing tackle on federal lands and water. The ban was imposed to protect animals from lead poisoning, but had been criticized by the National Rifle Association...

The Department of the Interior will include “all available” federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico that have not already been leased out for offshore oil drilling. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced Monday 73 million acres off the coast of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida would be offered at a lease sale in August as part of the Interior Department’s five-year leasing plan. “Opening more federal lands and waters to oil and gas drilling is a pillar of President Trump’s plan to make the United States energy independent,” Zinke said in a statement. Interior finalized its current five-year offshore...

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke signed a Secretarial Order on Thursday repealing the lead ammunition ban issued the day before Barack Obama left office. It is interesting to note that Thursday was Zinke’s first day as Interior Secretary and repealing the onerous ban one of his first actions.

It all started last Friday following the swearing-in ceremony of President Donald J. Trump on the west steps of the Capitol.The official and verified Twitter account of the National Park Service retweeted a side-by-side comparison posted by Binyamin Applebaum of Friday’s crowd and the same shot — taken at the same time — of Barack Obama‘s ceremony eight years ago. The revelation was clear: Trump’s crowd sizes were, well, trumped by those of Obama’s. And the crowd sizes weren’t even close.Soon enough, the tweet was un-retweeted, and in its place an apology from the National Parks Service that read, “We regret...

Just days after The National Park Service (NPS) was forced to shut down its Twitter activity over two retweets the Department of the Interior deemed inconsistent with the agency’s mission, the Twitter account for Badlands National Park in South Dakota seems to have gone rogue, tweeting numerous scientific facts about climate change that have since been deleted. The first tweet about climate science came at 11:40 a.m. local time Tuesday. It said: “The pre-industrial concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million (ppm). As of December 2016, 404.93 ppm.”

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Park Service purposefully raised hell on its official government Twitter account last Friday during the Inauguration Ceremony when the NPS re-tweeted a tweet belittling the newly elected President. The original tweet, made by Binyamin Appelbaum, a New York Times correspondent, read, “Compare the crowds: 2009 inauguration at left, 2017 inauguration at right” and featured a biased split image of Obama’s 2009 Inauguration vs. Trump’s 2017 Inauguration. Compare the crowds: 2009 inauguration at left, 2017 inauguration at right.#Inauguration pic.twitter.com/y7RhIR2nfC — Binyamin Appelbaum (@BCAppelbaum) January 20, 2017

As news organizations around the country proclaimed Cathy McMorris Rodgers a sure bet to be the next interior secretary and politicians in her Eastern Washington district quickly announced campaigns for her congressional seat, the person most in the dark was McMorris Rodgers herself. In her first extended remarks on the events of the last few weeks, the congresswoman said she never got a call from President-elect Donald Trump or his transition team saying she was going to be offered the Cabinet position before or after reports from unnamed sources said she was the likely pick. She also never got a...

President-elect Donald Trump has officially chosen Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke to serve as his interior secretary. Zinke was an early supporter of Trump's and publicly sought a Cabinet post when Trump visited Montana in May. Trump's decision to tap Zinke for interior upends Senate Republican plans of recruiting the congressman to challenge two-term Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in 2018.

<p>WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump has offered the position of interior secretary to Representative Ryan Zinke, Republican of Montana and a former Navy SEAL commander, according to two officials familiar with Mr. Trump’s decision.</p> <p>As head of the agency that oversees energy exploration on the nation’s public lands and waters, Mr. Zinke would be charged with carrying out the aggressive pro-drilling agenda championed by Mr. Trump on the campaign trail.</p>

In what is being touted as further diversification of the president-elect administration, Donald Trump is expected to name Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) to lead the Interior Department, according to reports. McMorris Rodgers gets the nod ahead of Sarah Palin and Harold Hamm.The candidates mentioned for the Interior Secretary were...  * Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor, 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee* Jan Brewer, former Republican Arizona governor* Forrest Lucas, founder of oil products company Lucas Oil* Harold Hamm, Oklahoma oil and gas mogul, chief executive of Continental Resources Inc* Robert Grady, venture capitalist, partner in private equity firm Gryphon...

According to reports, President-elect Donald Trump will tap Washington Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers to serve as United States Secretary of the Interior. McMorris Rodgers currently represents Washington's 5th Congressional district. Before serving in the U.S. congress, McMorris Rodgers was a member of the Washington House of Representatives, serving as minority leader. McMorris Rodgers is currently the highest ranking Republican woman in congress.

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin is emerging as President-elect Donald Trump's leading contender for interior secretary, three people close to Trump's transition team told POLITICO. An advocate of oil and gas development, Fallin signed a bill last year that would prevent Oklahoma cites from enacting bans on drilling. Fallin is a staunch critic of the Obama administration's climate change regulations for power plants. She signed an executive order last year saying that her state will not comply with the rules.

The Interior Department manages the nation’s public lands and waters. Here is the "short list" and I would love to see Jan Brewer get the spot, but honestly just to slap the face of the MSM my choice would be Sarah Palin just to get the goat of the libtards so we can drill baby drill. Who is your choice? Jan Brewer Former Arizona governor Robert E. Grady Gryphon Investors partner Harold G. Hamm Chief executive of Continental Resources, an oil and gas company Forrest Lucas President of Lucas Oil Products, which manufactures automotive lubricants, additives and greases Sarah Palin...

"Drill, baby, drill!” During her bid for vice president in 2008, that was Sarah Palin's crowd-pleasing chant promoting her energy policy. Now the pithy catchphrase – and the former Alaska governor herself – could make a comeback. News reports say Palin is on President-elect Donald Trump's short list to head the Interior Department. As secretary of the interior, she'd be in charge of overseeing oil drilling, uranium mining and other energy extraction on 500 million acres of public land, including iconic national parks like the Grand Canyon. The pro-mining policies Trump and Palin could be expected to bring to Interior...

On the day before President-elect Donald Trump came to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Obama, a list of the names of possible Trump cabinet choices and other key jobs was leaked to reporters. This being Washington and all, the list of names is undoubtedly a way to vet these choices in the court of public opinion before spending any political capital defending them. And, revealing the list also creates a sort of buzz around the campaign.

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is seriously discussing the possibility of giving former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin a cabinet position, Politico reported Wednesday. The Trump campaign is floating the idea of tapping the former Alaskan governor as Trump’s interior secretary. Palin has made no secret about her interest in holding a position in a Trump administration.

In the sadistic era of fraudulent Hope and Change, inspectors general inside the federal government have been kicked, neutered and starved of the authority and information they need to do their jobs. It's transparently clear: President Obama loathes and fears independent watchdogs. Accountability is an empty talking point without whistleblower protection and investigative autonomy. That is why Capitol Hill must do everything in its power to stop the White House war on the public's ombudsmen. Federal inspector generals across dozens of agencies are begging lawmakers to grant them access to public records as guaranteed by the 1978 Inspector General Act....