Why Ryan Zinke Will Never Be A Conservationist

It must be exhausting for the corpse of Teddy Roosevelt to do this much rolling

At a swanky Washington D.C. gala MC’d by Steve Rinella, the Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership last week awarded Representative Ryan Zinke (R-Montana) the James D. Range Conservation Award—its highest honor. That’s strange, because it’d be hard to find a single person who has ever achieved more harm to conservation than Zinke.

“Ryan Zinke has been a champion for keeping public lands in public hands and for the protection of big game migrations in Montana and the nation,” stated K.C. Walsh, a TRCP board member (and, full disclosure, my neighbor).

“Representative Zinke’s commitment to public lands and conservation has made him a champion of hunters and anglers,” stated Joel Pedersen, TRCP’s President and CEO.

Those are some nice sentiments and all, but they’re also lies. Both in his role as a congressperson and in his short-lived position as Trump’s first Secretary of the Interior, Zinke has dedicated himself to privatizing public lands, eliminating public access, killing off wildlife, and harming the environment all the above depend on. And he did all that while grifting. Zinke is arguably one of the most corrupt public officials of this modern era, even by the standards of the administration he served.

TRCP is a non-profit that lobbies for hunting and fishing interests. Among its members are prominent hunting brands like Sitka, along with critter clubs like Ducks Unlimited. It’s hard to understate its prominence in that world, even left-leaning brands like Patagonia and non-profits like The Nature Conservancy work with TRCP.

Zinke, a former Navy SEAL, was first elected to Congress in 2014, campaigning on the strength of his military record. But the veracity of that record has been called into question, including by none other than his former commanding officer.

In a letter questioning Zinke’s “moral make-up,” retired Navy SEAL Captain Larry W. Bailey wrote:

“[Zinke] used Navy (taxpayer) travel funds to make multiple trips from Norfolk, VA, to his home in MT, ostensibly to scout out training sites for his squadron. The truth was that he went to work on some family property and, apparently, on one occasion, took two or three other Navy SEALs with him. These trips not only involved airfare, but they also involved per diem and personal use of Navy time…Ryan’s moral failings, in my opinion, do not end with his being separated from his SEAL team over the travel scandal. His political career has some questionable acts associated with it, to include his creation of Special Operations for America (SOFA), a Political Action Committee, back in early 2012…almost immediately after Ryan declared his candidacy for the US House, he resigned as SOFA’s chairman and was given a grant from the very Political Action Committee he established. That, to me, is not ‘conflict of interest;’ it is ‘coincidence of interest.’”

“As a retired Navy SEAL officer, I also take exception to the looseness with which Ryan described his Navy career. Depending on which bio one reads, he was ‘a’ or ‘the’ commander in a certain high-capability Navy SEAL Team. He was never a commanding officer and was bypassed for possible consideration for promotion to captain as the result of his travel transgressions.”

“Having seen a heavily redacted copy of Ryan’s DD-214, which is a summary of his military career, I noted that, unlike his claim to have received two Bronze Stars for combat, he actually received them for meritorious service. Neither had the Combat ‘V’ for Valor, which would have been the case had he earned the awards for combat.”

“The statement by a retired Navy SEAL Master Chief sums up the essence of Ryan’s character. The man told me personally that Ryan is PNG (persona non grata) at his old SEAL team, primarily for the misleading statements he has made about his rank and importance at that ‘special’ team. That is a sad commentary on a man who had all the potential in the world and has, instead of coming clean about himself and his mistakes, tried to re-write his personal history in order to achieve political office.”

“Ryan’s ambitions will not stop here. He has shown by his dissimulation of facts regarding his career that he is willing to do whatever it takes to reach the next level.”

I include all that because I want to make the case that Zinke is doing something similar with his record on conservation.

Let’s go back to Zinke’s first term in Congress, which ran from 2015 to 2017. According to the League of Conservation Voters, which tracks politician voting records, Zinke voted against conservation on 71 of 81 measures, and was absent on eight of those votes. The organization gives him just a 3 percent lifetime score.

And it wasn’t just “liberal” policies Zinke voted against. In 2015, he voted against a measure to that would have cracked down on the smuggling of poached ivory into the United States. In 2016 he voted for a measure that would have prevented the military from hardening its infrastructure to prepare for the effects of climate change. In 2017 he voted for a measure that would have allowed heavily polluting industry to circumvent safeguards intended to protect workers in those industries from premature death. I could go on, but you get the idea.

In 2017, President Trump nominated Zinke to be Secretary of the Interior, a role he managed to keep for all of 21 months before he was drummed out for rampant corruption. You read that right, Zinke is the only cabinet member to be fired not for incompetence, or a scandal, or honoring his oath to the Constitution, but because he was considered too corrupt, even for Trump.

In less than two years at DOI, Zinke managed to rack up 18 federal investigations. He even got into trouble for meeting with Haliburton, an oil company and defense contractor with tens of billions in federal contracts in his office at the Department of the Interior to discuss a minor real estate transaction that would have incrementally increased the value of the house he owns in Whitefish, Montana. The same one he got run out of the Navy for fixing up on the taxpayer’s dime.

You’ll note I say “house,” not “home.” According to an investigation published by Politico in 2021, Zinke resides with his wife at their home in Santa Barbara, California.

While serving as interior secretary, Zinke found time for more than just penny grifting. During those 21 months, he presided over the largest reduction in public land protections in American history, pushed-through an oil lease sale in the largest wildlife refuge in the entire country, dismantled a decade of work that went into creating a sage grouse management plan all stakeholders could agree on, reversed a moratorium for coal extraction on public lands, pushed through an offshore oil drilling measure that imperiled the commercial fishing industry, gutted rules protecting communities from methane emissions, increased visitor fees at national parks, threatened populations of bighorn sheep by pushing extraction projects in the places they live, permitted construction of a mine emitting toxic waste into the country’s most popular Wilderness area, forced through road construction in one of Alaska’s most important wildlife refuges, and tried to cover all that up by eliminating transparency at the public agency he was charged with managing.

During that time, he also spent $139,000 of taxpayer money on new doors for his office, allegedly made threats against Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), rigged his fly rod backwards during an interview with Outside Magazine, wore the official uniform hat of the National Park Service backwards during a photoshoot he himself set up (top photo), spent $12,00 of taxpayer money on a private jet flight in order to address a campaign donor’s son’s hockey team, spent $14,000 of taxpayer money on a helicopter ride in order to go horseback riding, and commissioned his own personal flag which he made staff raise and lower as he entered and left DOI headquarters.

So why is TRCP under the impression that this man has done something for conservation? In 2024, Zinke co-sponsored HR 8836, the “Wildlife Movement Through Partnerships Act,” a bill which would make grants and technical assistance available to state and tribal wildlife agencies seeking to improve habitat connectivity. He also introduced HR 7430, the “Public Lands in Public Hands Act,” which would require any transfer or sale of public lands to be approved by Congress, as is already law.

Since it’s already in the freakin’ Constitution that any sale or transfer or public lands must be approved by Congress, that latter bill is little more than a performance piece. And now that President Trump is in office, neither piece of legislation has any chance of becoming law.

It’s not hard to come to the conclusion that performance is really Zinke’s goal as he masquerades as a conservationist. He votes against any realistic conservation measure with any hope of passing into law, but is happy to affix his name to more quixotic efforts that have no chance of making it through Congress, then crow about his involvement.

Such was the case recently when Senators Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colorado) introduced an amendment to the Senate’s budget resolution that would have prevented any public lands from being sold in order to finance tax cuts for billionaires. The measured failed in Senate vote, but despite the fact that it never reached the House of Representatives, where he serves, Zinke used it as an opportunity to drum up press for himself.

“I won’t bend on selling our public lands,” Zinke told Politico, in a report that spread widely. But in the house, where Republicans currently hold a seven seat majority, he knows he won’t need to in order for a land sale measure to pass.

To quote his former commanding officer, Zinke is “dissimulating” facts about his record on public lands, just as he did with his service record in the navy. No one has done more work against conservation than Zinke, no matter how hard he grand stands around the issue right now, as he seeks reelection in 2026.

And TRCP knows this. “Zinke has been a disappointment,” Whit Fosburgh, who at the time was that organization’s president, told The New York Times in 2017. "His first meetings were with the sportsmen’s community, and we were encouraged that he would be great—or at least someone we could work with. Since that time, it’s been nothing but rolling back conservation.”

So what is TRCP doing giving Zinke an award? I asked Ryan Busse, who actually does live in Montana, and ran for Governor last year. He explained that TRCP has been largely co-opted by the far right, and is more worried about fighting in the culture war than it is for actual conservation. As such, they’re playing along with Zinke’s efforts to greenwash his record.

“This is the equivalent of an organization claiming to be for firefighters giving an award to an arsonist,” Busse told me. “It’s a continuation of ‘hook and bullet’ organizations prioritizing MAGA knee bending over what they claim to be their actual missions.”

It’s cheesy, but since Zinke is so prepared to invoke the name, image, and reputation of the man, let’s end with a quote from ol’ Teddy himself:

“No man who is corrupt, no man who condones corruption in others, can possibly do his duty by the community.”

Wes Siler is your guide to leading a more exciting life outdoors. Upgrading to a paid subscription supports independent journalism and gives you personal access to his expertise and network, which he’ll use to help you plan trips, purchase gear, and solve problems. You can read more about what he’s doing on Substack through this link.