James G. Watt - Secretary of Interior

Secretary of Interior

During 1980, President-elect Reagan chose Watt to be his Secretary of the Interior. He was soon after approved by the United States Senate.

Watt's tenure as Secretary of the Interior was controversial, resulting primarily from his perceived hostility to environmentalism and his endorsement of the development and use of federal lands by foresting, ranching, and other commercial interests.

According to the environmental advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity, for more than two decades, Watt had the record for protecting the fewest species by the Endangered Species Act in United States history. The record was surpassed by Dirk Kempthorne, a George W. Bush appointee who, as of August 27, 2007, had not listed a single species in the 15 months since his confirmation.

Greg Wetstone, who was the chief environment council at the House Energy and Commerce Committee during the Reagan administration and later served as director of advocacy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Watt was one of the two most "intensely controversial and blatantly anti-environmental political appointees" of American history. (The other was Anne Gorsuch, director of the EPA at that time.) According to the environmental groups, Watt decreased funding for environmental programs, restructured the department to decrease federal regulatory power, wished to eliminate the Land and Water Conservation Fund (which had been designed to increase the size of National Wildlife Refuges and other protected land), eased regulations of oil and mining companies, began efforts and directed the National Park Service to draft legislation that would have de-authorized a number of previously Congressionally authorized National Parks, and favored making wilderness areas and shorelands, such as the Santa Monica Bay in southern California, available to commercial leasing for oil and gas exploration and development.

Watt resisted accepting donations of private land to be used for conservation purposes. He suggested that all 80 million acres (320,000 km²) of undeveloped land in the United States be opened for drilling and mining in the year 2000. The area leased to coal mining companies quintupled during his term as Secretary of the Interior. Watt boasted that he leased "a billion acres" (4 million km²) of U.S. coastal waters, even though only a small portion of that area would ever be drilled. Watt once stated, "We will mine more, drill more, cut more timber."

Watt periodically mentioned his Dispensationalist Christian faith when discussing his method of environmental management. Speaking before Congress, he once said, "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations."

One apocryphal quote attributed to Watt is "After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back." However, there are no reliable indications that he actually ever said this. Glenn Scherer, writing for Grist Magazine, erroneously attributed this remark to 1981 testimony by Watt to Congress. Journalist Bill Moyers, relying on the Grist article, also attributed the comment to Watt. After it was discovered that the quote was mistaken, Grist corrected their article and Moyers apologized. Watt has denied both the attribution and the associated characterizations of his policy.