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Interior Secretary Gale Norton resigns Norton, former Colorado attorney general, one of architects of Bush’s energy policy, led push for ‘cooperative conservation’ John Heilprin Associated Press Writer
Interior Secretary Gale Norton resigned March 10 after five years of guiding the Bush administration’s initiative to open government lands in the West to more oil and gas drilling, logging, grazing and commercial recreation.
Norton, the first woman to lead the Interior Department in its 157-year history, told President Bush in a letter she intends to leave at the end of March, saying she hoped to eventually return to the mountains of the West.
“Now I feel it is time for me to leave this mountain you gave me to climb, catch my breath, then set my sights on new goals to achieve in the private sector,” she said in the two-page resignation letter.
A day shy of her 52nd birthday, Norton emphasized in her resignation letter to Bush and in her remarks to reporters that her reasons for leaving were entirely personal. She said she hadn’t done any job-searching, adding she wanted to spend more time with her husband, John, and take time for recreational pursuits like skiing.
“This is really a question of accomplishing the goals that I set out do here and wanting to return to having a private life again,” she said.
“I’m looking forward to visiting a national park without holding a press conference there,” she said. “I’m looking forward to enjoying the wide-open spaces again.” An architect of Bush’s energy policy As one of the architects of Bush’s energy policy, Norton eased regulations to speed approval of oil and gas drilling permits, particularly in New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.
In her first three years, the pace of drilling permits issued by Interior’s Bureau of Land Management rose 70 percent. She also was the administration’s biggest advocate for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on Alaska’s North Slope to oil drilling, areas considered sensitive for caribou and other wildlife.
“We have improved the ways we are protecting wildlife in ways that energy development is responsible,” she said March 10. “We spent billions of dollars in improving wildlife habitat and otherwise restoring the environment.
Many environmentalists and Democrats have been sharply critical of her stewardship of public lands.
“Gale Norton was an unpopular symbol of unpopular policies,” said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. “Americans do not believe their public lands should be sold to the highest bidder, and they don’t believe in privatizing their parks, forests, monuments. While the symbol of those unpopular policies may be leaving, we don’t expect those unpopular policies to change.”
But others, such as the Nature Conservancy’s president, Steve McCormick, praised her for working as close partners in creating Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes National Park, the new Glacial Ridge National Wildlife Refuge in Minnesota and the Rocky Mountain Front Conservation Area in Montana.
Norton led the Bush administration’s push for “cooperative conservation” — shifting more of the responsibility for land management and recovery of endangered species to states and local communities. The Interior Department oversees the government’s ownership of one-fifth of the nation’s land.
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