United States Department of the Interior

Overview

The United States Department of the Interior is the federal executive department that manages most of America’s federally owned lands and natural resources, runs the national park system, oversees wildlife refuges, and administers the federal government’s trust responsibilities to Tribal Nations. Created on 3 March 1849, it is led by a Senate-confirmed Secretary who sits in the Cabinet, and since January 2025 that Secretary has been Doug Burgum (U.S. Department of the Interior; USAFacts; E&E News).

That combination — conservation landlord, energy leasing authority, and tribal trustee in a single department — is what makes Interior unlike any other Cabinet agency, and it is why its decisions are contested from both directions at once. Its stated mission is to protect and manage the nation’s natural resources and cultural heritage, provide scientific information about those resources, and honour its trust responsibilities to American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and affiliated Island Communities (U.S. Department of the Interior). USAFacts summarises its functions the same way: overseeing national parks and other protected lands, regulating natural resource extraction, upholding tribal relations and trust responsibilities, and preserving the environment (USAFacts). Despite its name, it has nothing to do with policing or internal security — those sit elsewhere in the federal government — and its famously broad portfolio once earned it the nickname “the Department of Everything Else” (U.S. Department of the Interior).

From the “Home Department” to a land-management empire

Interior was created on the last day of the 30th Congress, 3 March 1849, by pulling together offices scattered across other departments: the General Land Office from Treasury, the Patent Office from State, the Indian Affairs Office from the War Department, and the military pension offices from the War and Navy Departments (U.S. Department of the Interior). Thomas Ewing, appointed by President Zachary Taylor, was its first Secretary, and the new department’s early remit was sprawling — the census, territorial governments, western exploration, the District of Columbia jail and water system, hospitals and universities, alongside Indians, public lands, patents and pensions (U.S. Department of the Interior).

Over the following decades the department shed functions like patents and the census and accumulated the institutions that define it today. Congress established Yellowstone as the first national park in 1872, created the U.S. Geological Survey in 1879, and established the Bureau of Reclamation in 1902 to build dams and aqueducts in the west (U.S. Department of the Interior). President Theodore Roosevelt established the first national wildlife refuge at Pelican Island, Florida, in 1903, and President Wilson signed the legislation creating the National Park Service in 1916 (U.S. Department of the Interior). The Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 established the government’s right to rental payments and royalties on oil, gas and minerals production, and in 1934 the Taylor Grazing Act began regulating economic uses of public lands while the Indian Reorganization Act abolished the allotment system, formed tribal governments and affirmed the Secretary’s trust responsibilities (U.S. Department of the Interior). The modern land-management shape arrived in 1946, when the General Land Office and the Grazing Service merged into the Bureau of Land Management (U.S. Department of the Interior).

The offshore and minerals side followed the same pattern of creation, scandal and reorganisation: the Minerals Management Service was established in 1982 to manage mineral revenue collection and the Outer Continental Shelf, renamed in 2010, and replaced in 2011 by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and the Office of Natural Resources Revenue (U.S. Department of the Interior). The through-line across 177 years is a department that keeps gaining the jobs nobody else wants — and that therefore sits at the centre of almost every fight about what federal land is for.

What it runs today: eleven bureaus, and a budget smaller than its estate

Interior is a Cabinet-level agency with eleven technical bureaus, plus offices under the Secretary, the Solicitor and the Inspector General (U.S. Department of the Interior). The Bureau of Land Management manages public lands for multiple use and sustained yield on nearly 250 million surface acres, plus 700 million acres of subsurface mineral estate (U.S. Department of the Interior). The National Park Service maintains and manages a network of 423 natural, cultural and recreational sites, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manages 837 million acres of land and water, implementing the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Lacey Act, among others (U.S. Department of the Interior). The Bureau of Indian Affairs fulfils Indian trust responsibilities and promotes self-determination and self-governance for federally recognised Tribes and Alaska Natives, while the Bureau of Reclamation manages water and related resources in the west and the U.S. Geological Survey provides science on natural hazards, resources, ecosystems and land-use change (U.S. Department of the Interior).

Bureau	What it manages
Bureau of Land Management	Nearly 250 million surface acres; 700 million acres of subsurface mineral estate
National Park Service	423 natural, cultural and recreational sites
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service	837 million acres of land and water; endangered species and migratory birds
Bureau of Reclamation	Water and related resources in the west
U.S. Geological Survey	Earth science: hazards, resources, ecosystems, land-use change
Bureau of Indian Affairs	Tribal trust responsibilities; tribal self-governance
Bureau of Ocean Energy Management / Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement	Offshore energy and mineral resources; safe offshore production

For all that estate, the department is not a big spender by federal standards: it spent $22.4 billion in fiscal year 2025, or 0.3% of federal spending, ranking 19th among federal agencies, and employed about 59,000 civilian staff as of May 2026 — 2.9% of the civilian federal workforce, down from 3.7% in 2012 (USAFacts). Its highest-spending divisions in that year were the National Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Reclamation (USAFacts). The Secretary is nominated by the president, confirmed by the Senate, and sworn into office as one of the 15 Cabinet members (USAFacts).

Doug Burgum, the former governor of North Dakota, was confirmed to the job on 30 January 2025 by 79 votes to 18, with 26 Democrats joining every Republican (E&E News). At his confirmation hearing he said that “the American people have clearly placed their confidence in President Donald Trump to achieve energy dominance, and by energy dominance, that’s the foundation of American prosperity” (E&E News). Democrats who opposed the administration’s fossil-fuel push still voted for him in large numbers — a bipartisan margin that makes the later fights over his department’s leasing decisions a story about policy, not about his confirmation.

Greater Chaco: where the trustee and the leasing authority collide

Nowhere does Interior’s dual role bite harder than in the Greater Chaco region of northwestern New Mexico. On 7 June 2023, Public Land Order 7923 withdrew the federal lands surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park — an approximately 10-mile buffer — from location and entry under the mining laws and from leasing under the mineral leasing laws for 20 years, subject to valid existing rights (Bureau of Land Management). The order itself identified 336,404.42 acres as withdrawn; the department’s later environmental assessment re-derived the area from GIS legal descriptions at approximately 338,690 acres, and both figures are reported here because the difference is a measurement method, not a different piece of land (Bureau of Land Management).

That withdrawal is now the subject of a formal revocation process. After President Trump’s Executive Order 14154 of 20 January 2025 directed review of agency actions restricting energy and mineral development, the Secretary issued Secretary’s Order 3418 on 3 February 2025 instructing officials to evaluate existing land withdrawals, and the Bureau of Land Management began formal tribal consultation on undoing the Chaco order (Bureau of Land Management; E&E News). E&E News reported that removing the 10-mile buffer had been listed as a priority in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, and that New Mexico’s Democratic congressional delegation condemned the move (E&E News). The All Pueblo Council of Governors, which represents 20 Pueblo Nations in New Mexico and one in Texas, has campaigned to keep the Greater Chaco region permanently protected from oil and gas leasing — putting the department’s trust responsibilities and its leasing programme on opposite sides of the same decision.

The department’s own July 2026 draft environmental assessment lays out three paths, and the numbers in it cut against the rhetoric on both sides. Under Alternative A (no action) the withdrawal stays in place; under Alternative B (the proposed action) the Secretary would revoke it in full, reopening the whole approximately 10-mile area to mineral leasing and entry; under Alternative C (partial revocation) only the outer ring would reopen — about 220,970 acres — while the federal interests within an approximately 5-mile radius of the park would stay withdrawn (Bureau of Land Management). The assessment counts at least 145 traditional cultural properties wholly or partly within the full action area, 99 of them within the partial-revocation area, of which 46 would remain withdrawn under Alternative C — and it cautions that these are minimum numbers, since past ethnographic work has not been exhaustive (Bureau of Land Management). That stat, plus its source and its implication, is the heart of the dispute: the landscape at stake is densely cultural, not empty acreage, whichever alternative the Secretary picks. Yet the same assessment forecasts only 14 additional wells on new leases under either action alternative over 20 years, because the area inside the 5-mile buffer that Alternative C would retain has low development potential (Bureau of Land Management).

The process itself has drawn as much attention as the substance. The Bureau of Land Management ran a 7-day public scoping period from 1 to 7 April 2026, after notifying interested parties on 31 March 2026 (Bureau of Land Management). Whatever the Secretary ultimately decides, two limits in the record matter for anyone reading the outcome: the 2023 withdrawal never touched valid existing rights or existing leases, so production on existing leases continues under every alternative, and the draft assessment is an analysis for a decision, not the decision itself (Bureau of Land Management).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not claim a final outcome for the Greater Chaco revocation: as of the July 2026 draft assessment, the Secretary had not selected among no action, full revocation and partial revocation (Bureau of Land Management). It does not state a single definitive acreage for the withdrawal, because the order’s 336,404.42 acres and the assessment’s approximately 338,690 GIS acres measure the same area two ways (Bureau of Land Management). It does not give a swearing-in date for Secretary Burgum, a current headcount beyond the dated May 2026 USAFacts figure, or a headquarters street address, none of which the sources read in full verify. It does not repeat the July 2026 High Country News account of Pueblo leaders’ criticism of the Secretary, which could not be re-verified in this run, and it does not judge whether tribal consultation on the revocation was meaningful — it reports that consultation was initiated and that the move was publicly condemned by the state’s Democratic delegation, leaving both characterisations to their sources.