Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is planning a massive overhaul of the Interior Department and its bureaus, and planning to greatly increase energy development from public lands/DOI

A massive overhaul of the Interior Department and all its bureaus, which include the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management, apparently is in the works, while at the same time Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says unleashing the nation's energy resources is the answer to the country's long-term prosperity.

Interior plans to consolidate a range of operations, such as information technology, human resources, finance, and communications, rather than have those roles filled within each bureau. The changes, which have yet to be publicly announced, were laid out in an article in Government Executive on Wednesday night.

“Under President Donald J. Trump’s leadership, the department is working to right-size the federal workforce, cut bureaucratic waste, and ensure taxpayer dollars are spent efficiently,” J. Elizabeth Peace, a department spokesperson, told the publication. “We will continue working with the Office of Personnel Management and other agencies to implement cost-saving measures that put taxpayers first while ensuring the responsible stewardship of America’s natural and cultural resources.”

The consolidation news comes as Interior is ramping up the pressure on its employees to resign now and remain on the payroll until the end of the fiscal year or risk being part of a reduction-in-force (RIF) and losing months of pay.

"NPS has to follow DOI policy, which is that anyone who expresses interest in the DRP [deferred resignation] will be placed on admin leave next week, whether or not they sign the agreement paperwork they don't get to see until they express interest. And, there's no pathway for anyone who then does not sign the deferred resignation papers to go back to work. They can fire you, or target you for RIF," one Interior Department employee told the Traveler

Also on Wednesday, Burgum told his far-flung workforce during a video call that the department has vast holdings across the country valued at roughly $100 trillion, and that the department should be generating at least $1 trillion in revenue annually for the government. Part of getting there is making the department and its bureaus more efficient, the secretary said.

"When we cut red tape, we reduce a bunch of unnecessary work that is not helpful in terms of actually achieving the goals we have about protecting and managing the nation's national resources," Burgum said.

Interior Department staff said Thursday morning they would see if the secretary had time for an interview with the Traveler to discuss his goals.

During his video presentation to Interior staff the secretary, very likely revealing the Trump administration's intentions, also said the Endangered Species Act doesn't matter any more as gene-editing techniques can bring species back from extinction. In a post on X, Burgum wrote that the "Department of the Interior is excited about the potential of 'de-extinction' technology and how it may serve broader purposes beyond the recovery of lost species, including strengthening biodiversity protection efforts and helping endangered or at-risk species. The Endangered Species List has become like the Hotel California: once a species enters, they never leave. In fact, 97 percent of species that are added to the endangered list remain there. This is because the status quo is focused on regulation more than innovation."

"It’s time to fundamentally change how we think about species conservation," he continued in the post. "Going forward, we must celebrate removals from the endangered list — not additions. The only thing we’d like to see go extinct is the need for an endangered species list to exist."

That post prompted Mike Senatore, senior vice president of conservation programs at Defenders of Wildlife, earlier in the day to state that "[D]eveloping genetic technology cannot be viewed as the solution to human-caused extinction, especially not when this administration is seeking to actively destroy the habitats and legal protections imperiled species need. Our research efforts, conservation dollars, and legal tools should be focused on restoring and preserving the species currently on the ground and in need of help, rather than immediately politicizing scientific achievements.

“If Secretary Burgum truly believed in wildlife conservation, he would not be opening massive swaths of our public lands to unnecessary logging, drilling and mining, nor would he be eliminating regulations critical to safeguarding endangered and imperiled species," said Senatore.

During his address to his workforce, Burgum said that, "We have the world's largest balance sheet, but last year the revenue we pulled in was about $18 billion and it may seem like a big number. It's not a big number if we are managing $100 trillion in assets, which we may be. A 1 percent return for the American public ... a 1 percent return on $100 trillion is 50 times the revenue we're bringing now."

The secretary said Interior has an opportunity "to restore American prosperity. We can ensure national security" by developing energy reserves in Alaska. "At the same time, 90-99 percent of all the lands that we have, we can enjoy the natural resources. We can make sure they're completely sustainable," added Burgum. 

"These are not all competing priorities where people have to yell at each other. We can do all of many great things that conservation groups want to do, and we can do all the things that wildlife groups want to do, and we can do all the things that energy groups want to do, and we'll have land and resources left over," the secretary said. "We're so blessed."

On the matter of federal lands, Burgum said those lands have gotten in the way of the American dream of owning a house. He said through land swaps communities could gain lands for housing while wilderness areas could be filled in. While Burgum did not specifically reference Utah's unsuccessful bid last fall to have the U.S. Supreme Court consider a lawsuit asking for BLM lands to be turned over to the state, the secretary did mention that the federal government owns "over 60 percent" of Utah. In Nevada next door, he continued, legislation has passed asking the federal government "to figure out a way to release federal lands to help those communities grow and make housing affordable and we can do that."

In closing, Burgum referenced Theodore Roosevelt, one of the most conservation-minded presidents the United States has ever seen.

"We don't have national security without secure supply chains. We don't have all the things that we just may be perhaps have taken for granted for the last 50 years and we can't taken them for granted anymore. It also depends on us winning the [artifical intelligence] arms race. We must have more electricity not les," said the secretary. "How do we do that in a safer, smarter, healthier way than anyone else? When you have the opportunity to work on meaningful work. Theodore Roosevelt who played such an important and oversized role in all that we do, whether it was Fish and Wildlife, the national parks, the BLM, the US Forest Service, he played such a big role, and when he put away hundreds and hundreds of millions of acres, he did so with the intention that this should be for the benefit and enjoyment of American people.

"The key word is 'people.' That means we protect them forever. So generations can enjoy it."