Trump Picks North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum for Interior Department

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Secretary of the Department of the Interior is a crucial position for Trump’s plan to change American energy policy.

President-elect Donald Trump has selected his onetime rival in the presidential campaign, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, to lead the Department of the Interior, a crucial position for his plan to change American energy policy.

He made the announcement at Mar-a-Lago on the evening of Nov. 14.

The Department of the Interior, created in 1849, “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, Native Hawaiians, and affiliated Island Communities.”

The agency includes the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Interior controls 20 percent of all land in the United States and handles matters related to the United States’ insular areas, which include various Pacific islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

It also includes the Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Ocean Management, both critical to energy policy for an administration whose incoming head vowed while campaigning to “drill, baby, drill.”

Currently led by Deb Haaland, the department was headed by David Bernhardt under the first Trump administration, who was seen as a contender for the role again.