Kempthorne Takes over Department of Interior

In May 2006, the U.S. Senate confirmed Dirk Kempthorne to succeed Gale Norton as head of the Department of the Interior, which manages 20% of all land in the U.S. Kempthorne, who has served in the U.S. Senate and as governor of Idaho, has worked to open national lands to logging, mining, and drilling; the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) gave Kempthorne a lifetime score of 1%. However, one of Kempthorne’s first actions was to release a National Park Service management plan that reverses a Bush administration effort to weaken environmental safegaurds and reaffirms a core committment to land protection.