The new interior secretary just rode into work on a horse

Arriving on horseback Thursday, newly minted Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke pledged he would devote more resources to national parks, boost the morale of department employees and bolster the sovereignty of American Indian tribes. Zinke — who was confirmed by the Senate on Wednesday by a 68-to-31 vote — rode with a nine-person mounted police escort to the Interior Department’s downtown headquarters on Tonto, an Irish sport horse. The horse, a bay roan gelding standing just over 17 hands tall, is normally kept in stables on the Mall and is owned by the U.S. Park Police. While the Park Police serve as the interior secretary’s regular security detail, officers are typically not mounted. A fifth-generation Montanan, Zinke also sent an email to the department’s 70,000 employees telling them that he had spent years working on public lands issues and was dedicated to protecting America’s natural heritage. “I approach this job in the same way that Boy Scouts taught me so long ago: leave the campsite in better condition than I found it,” he wrote in a missive that was later posted on Medium. “I’m an unapologetic admirer and disciple of Teddy Roosevelt. I believe in traditional mixed use ‘conservation ethics’ doctrine laid out by [Gifford] Pinchot, but realize that there are special places where man is more an observer than a participant, as outlined by [John] Muir.” Although Zinke received much more bipartisan support than most of President Trump’s other Cabinet nominees, he also faces challenges mediating between some of Interior’s traditional supporters and conservative Republicans eager to make changes to how public lands are managed. Utah Republicans, for example, have asked Trump to unilaterally revoke national monument status for Bears Ears, a tribal site in southeastern Utah that Obama designated less than a month before leaving office...more