{"id":2464442,"date":"2018-01-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-24T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/uncategorized\/zinke-shows-his-true-colors\/"},"modified":"2022-05-12T12:43:04","modified_gmt":"2022-05-12T18:43:04","slug":"zinke-shows-his-true-colors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/outdoor-adventure\/environment\/zinke-shows-his-true-colors\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Zinke Shows His True Colors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Practically the entire membership of the National Park System Advisory Board resigned last week<\/a> in protest, claiming they\u2019d been frozen out by Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. In the nine months since Zinke\u2019s confirmation, members of the board said they were unable to secure a single meeting with the cabinet official to whom they were congressionally mandated to report.<\/p>\n

Board chairperson and former Alaska governor Tony Knowles<\/a> expressed this frustration\u2014using a diplomatic tone void of rancor\u2014in a letter tendered<\/a> on behalf of the group. Under any other administration, the interior secretary\u2019s office probably would have issued a boilerplate statement and let the news cycle wash the unpleasantness away. But these are different times. Before the day was over, Zinke\u2019s deputy undersecretary, Todd Willens, released an insult-laden response<\/a> via press secretary Heather Swift, calling the Knowles letter a \u201chollow and political stunt.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe welcome their resignations,\u201d Willens wrote, \u201cand would expect nothing less than quitting from members who found it convenient to turn a blind eye to women being sexually harassed at National Parks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Willens went on to accuse the former board members of unduly \u201ctaking credit for the extensive work of private companies\u201d during the 2016 National Park centennial campaign and called it \u201cpatently false\u201d that the Department of the Interior had not engaged with the board. \u201cAs recently as January 8, we were working with the board to renew their charter, schedule a meeting, and fill vacancies.\u201d As if to say good riddance, Willens wrote, \u201cWe have a number of individuals who have expressed interest in joining the board and we will now fast track filling these new vacancies with people who are actually dedicated to working with the Department to better our national parks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s outrageous,\u201d former board member Gretchen Long tells me from her home in Wilson, Wyoming. \u201cI knew this kind of rhetoric came from the White House, but to see it come from the DOI and the secretary\u2014the same style of degrading and discrediting and lies, frankly dishonest information\u2014I was appalled.\u201d<\/p>\n

Long, a graduate of Harvard Business School with conservation and outdoor education bona fides that include chairing the National Outdoor Leadership School and the National Parks Conservation Association, tells me that no board members had been contacted on January 8 about a future meeting. Knowles also denied receiving any correspondence from Zinke\u2019s office on that day. As for the jibe about the centennial project, Long calls it \u201chogwash.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew this kind of rhetoric came from the White House, but to see it come from the DOI and the secretary\u2014the same style of degrading and discrediting and lies, frankly dishonest information\u2014I was appalled.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n

\u201cThere were private companies, but also 200 citizen groups and nonprofits. The work was spread out with everyone\u2019s involvement. Public, private, not-for-profit\u2014that\u2019s what made it so successful, and some might say too successful,\u201d Long says, referring to back-to-back record-breaking annual visitation numbers at some parks that have stressed staff and infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Knowles, the board\u2019s now-former chairperson, is a Vietnam War veteran and was an oil-rig roughneck before he became governor of Alaska. He tells me the accusation of political stunting actually made him laugh. \u201cThis is the least political body I\u2019ve ever been with. We\u2019re just a bunch of wonks, and everyone just loves to get around and talk policy,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019d have no idea what party these people belonged to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Congress established the all-volunteer, nonpartisan NPS Advisory Board in 1935 to advise the Park Service director and interior secretary on big-picture policy. In recent years, that meant recommending official historic landmarks, suggesting ways to incorporate climate-change concerns into park management planning, diversifying the constituency of visitors, and planning for the centennial. The majority of the outgoing board\u2019s terms were set to expire in May 2018, so a transition was forthcoming, but no one expected this bitter turn.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur resignation was not something that we came to lightly,\u201d Knowles says. But after nearly a year of watching Zinke reverse the previous administration\u2019s orders (notably, bans on lead ammunition in wildlife refuges and plastic bottles in national parks, and a director\u2019s order to factor climate mitigation into park management), as well as plans to increase entrance fees and privatize campgrounds\u2014all without any board consultation\u2014the members felt they had no choice. \u201cIt\u2019s like being on the phone and someone puts you on hold for a year,\u201d Knowles says. \u201cAt some point you have to hang up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither Knowles nor Long found the quip about the board\u2019s alleged inaction on sexual harassment within the NPS amusing. <\/strong>Personnel management doesn\u2019t fall under the board\u2019s legislative mandate, and Knowles says he thinks the Zinke team fired back with the sexual harassment barb as a diversionary tactic. \u201cI was really sad to see that a secretary, through a spokesperson, would resort to mudslinging and character assassination to distract the discussion from what I thought were some very legitimate points that we were trying to raise.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been tracking Zinke closely for about a year. Last December, I wrote a profile for this magazine<\/a> on the secretary. And while I suspect he\u2019s given up on conservation, I thought Zinke would maintain the veneer of respectability befitting both a former military officer and his current position. Here again, however, Zinke has revealed how little he resembles his proclaimed hero<\/a>, Teddy Roosevelt.<\/p>\n

The 26th president\u2019s carefully balanced speeches frustrated his supporters in the progressive movement, who wanted Roosevelt to thump his enemies with his legendary rhetorical hammer. Tempting as it may have been, Roosevelt never hurled personal insults from his \u201cbully pulpit\u201d and almost never called out enemies by name. As Edith Halford Ryan notes, Roosevelt\u2019s inclusive rhetoric contributed to his image as \u201cjust and impartial\u201d and \u201cseeking the best for his nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Faced with a choice between taking the high road and grabbing two fistfuls of mud, Zinke\u2019s team chose the latter.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n

The fact that Roosevelt, a century later, still holds a vaunted place in the collective memory has as much to do with his meticulous word choice as with any of his policies. Make no mistake: Trump\u2019s Twitter account isn\u2019t a bully pulpit\u2014it\u2019s just the plaything of a bully. And now, a year after Trump\u2019s inauguration, we\u2019ve all grown a little too used to the new normal\u2014a state of public discourse in which, almost daily, and sometimes hourly, the highest elected officer takes cheap shots at anyone who dares to criticize him, from the loftiest senators in his own party to everyday citizens. Still, I held out a sliver of hope that Trump\u2019s total disregard for civility might be contained; that it wouldn\u2019t rub off on his cabinet, or on the system writ large; that political appointees like Zinke might at least maintain the old standards of decorum\u2014those simple, unwritten rules that have helped our government function through dire political crises over the course of the century and a half since the Civil War. Suffice it to say, the Interior Department\u2019s response to the NPS board resignations did not kindle my hope.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe part about this that\u2019s strange is the sheer lack of respect,\u201d says Kristen Brengel, vice president of government affairs for the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association and someone who has worked in conservation policy since the George W. Bush years. \u201cThis is a group of volunteers who care deeply about the parks, who spend their time advising on issues where they have an interest and a specialty,\u201d she says. \u201cThey work in a very nonpartisan fashion, and they shouldn\u2019t have been criticized.\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked Brengel if she thought the response was a knee-jerk misfire by overeager staffers without approval from Zinke. She says it is not likely that such an important and public document would leave the Interior Department without Zinke\u2019s approval. \u201cNo way that someone has free reign to make that choice for the secretary,\u201d she says. And, crucially, Zinke hasn\u2019t rebutted any part of Willens\u2019 letter. However, Brengel didn\u2019t discount the possibility of pugnaciousness on the part of Zinke\u2019s staffers. \u201cIn D.C.,\u201d she says, \u201cthe way things typically operate is that you reflect the people you work for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Faced with a choice between taking the high road and grabbing two fistfuls of mud, Zinke\u2019s team chose the latter. And if Zinke\u2019s team reflects their leader, then surely Zinke reflects Trump just as clearly. So what does Zinke mean when he says, as he did during the conference call with reporters in which he bashed Patagonia, \u201cI don\u2019t yield to pressure, only higher principle\u201d?<\/p>\n

Where is the higher principle in slagging a group of nonpartisan volunteers?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Practically the entire membership of the National Park System Advisory Board resigned last week in protest, claiming they’d been frozen out by Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44696,"featured_media":2277151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"uuid":"11ff1bb08020f80430a0c1380e8313ff","footnotes":""},"categories":[2547],"tags":[2946,2805,2912,2709,2603,2783],"byline":[1029],"ad_cat":[],"legacy-category":[],"class_list":["post-2464442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","tag-alaska","tag-conservation","tag-national-parks","tag-nps","tag-politics","tag-public-lands","byline-elliott-d-woods"],"acf":[],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"Ryan Zinke Shows His True Colors","url":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/outdoor-adventure\/environment\/zinke-shows-his-true-colors\/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/outdoor-adventure\/environment\/zinke-shows-his-true-colors\/"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/23\/zinke-close-up-glasses_h_0.jpg","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/23\/zinke-close-up-glasses_h_0.jpg"},"articleSection":"Environment","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"jversteegh"}],"creator":["jversteegh"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Online","logo":"https:\/\/www.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/favicon-194x194-1.png"},"keywords":["alaska","conservation","national parks","nps","politics","public lands"],"dateCreated":"2018-01-24T00:00:00Z","datePublished":"2018-01-24T00:00:00Z","dateModified":"2022-05-12T18:43:04Z"},"rendered":"