The position puts Mr. Zinke in control of 500 million acres of United States land — roughly a fifth of the nation —<br />and charged with balancing the department’s contradictory duties of conserving land and mining it for resources at a time of intense pressure from energy producers, environmental activists, state lawmakers and his own boss, who made fossil fuel jobs a crucial part of his campaign platform.<br />“I could not be more thrilled that Donald Trump selected him,” said Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican<br />of Utah, who has tried to transfer millions of acres of public lands out of federal control.<br />In office, Mr. Zinke has repeatedly said he is against the transfer of federal lands to state<br />hands, bucking Republican colleagues who say Washington controls too many Western acres.<br />President Barack Obama blocked new coal leases, imposed moratoriums on uranium drilling near the Grand Canyon<br />and set aside 553 million acres for national monuments, more than any other president.<br />“The project,” he wrote in his 2016 book, “promoted a lifetime of conservation values.”<br />President Trump has tapped Mr. Zinke, 55, a House member<br />and fifth-generation Montanan who grew up in this timber-and-tourism community, to be secretary of the interior.<br />“I am an unapologetic admirer of Teddy Roosevelt,” Mr. Zinke said at a January nomination hearing before the Senate Energy<br />and Natural Resources Committee, where he evoked Roosevelt on 10 occasions.
