Secretary and Salary: Deb Haaland $221,400
Fiscal year 2022 Budget Request: $17.6 Billion
Staffing: About 70,000 employees
Mission: The U.S. Department of the Interior protects and manages the Nation’s natural resources and cultural heritage; provides scientific and other information about those resources; and honors its trust responsibilities or special commitments to American Indians, Alaska Natives, and affiliated Island Communities.
Creation: March 3, 1849
Historical Facts:
1849- Thomas Ewing becomes first Secretary of the Interior
1872 Congress establishes Yellowstoneas the first National Park.
1879 Creation of the U.S. Geological Survey.
1916 President Wilson signed legislation creating The National Park Service.
1935 The Bureau of Reclamation completes construction of Hoover Dam.
1980 The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act is enacted adding 47 million acres to the National Park System and 54 acres to the National Wildlife Refuge System.
2001 Gale A. Norton is nominated the first woman to serve as Secretary of ...
“Justice consists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but finding out the right and upholding it, wherever found, against the wrong.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.”
Louis D. Brandeis
