U.S. Department of the Interior Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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In 1789, The U.S. Congress established three executive departments: Foreign Affairs (later called the State Department), the Treasury, and Department of War, and with them, created the positions of attorney general and postmaster general. Although these three departments were created to accommodate and maintain complicated interior and external affairs, they had to administer most domestic matters as well. The proposal for a department of internal affairs continued for a half-century, supported by many presidents, including Madison and Polk. The Mexican-American War of 1846-48 gave the proposal new support as the responsibilities of the federal government increased. President Polk’s treasury secretary, Robert J. Walker, became one of the most vocal advocates for such a department. This idea of forming a separate department to handle domestic issues wasn’t realized until March 3, 1849, when a bill was passed that created the Department of the Interior (DOI) to oversee the nation’s internal management.

This new department had a wide range of responsibilities, including the management of all public parks, settlement of freed slaves in Haiti, management of hospitals and universities, overseeing all Washington, D.C., jails, and the administration of all patents and pensions. Natural resource management, land use and classification, wildlife conservation, Native American affairs, and territorial affairs remained within the scope of the DOI; however, many of the original domestic concerns for this new department were gradually transferred to other new departments such as the Bureau of Agriculture, which later became the Department of Agriculture. Additional agencies were created, such as the Home Department, which consolidated the General Land Office into the Department of the Treasury, the Patent Office into the Department of State, the Indian Affairs Office into the War Department, and the military pension offices with the War and Navy Departments. Subsequently, DOI responsibilities expanded to include the census, regulation of territorial governments, exploration of the western wilderness, and management of the D.C. water and sewer system.

In its early days, the Bureau of Education was placed under the DOI, but later transferred to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Since the 1870s, the DOI made important advances that would keep its work crucial to this day. Between 1887-89, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) was established within the DOI, and the Dawes Act authorized property allotments to Native Americans.

In addition, agencies within the DOI were established to oversee most federal lands and issues involving rock and water. Since the department began its geological survey of the American West in 1869, it would ultimately lead Congress to the creation of the U.S. Geological Survey in 1879. In 1910, the Bureau of Mines was established to oversee mine safety and disseminate rock, ore and mineral information, while ten years later, the Mineral Leasing Act would be created to impose mining land rental fees and royalties on oil, gas, rock, ore and mineral production in 1920. In 1977, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement would be set up to oversee the regulation of federal and state strip coal mining and environmental damage mitigation. In 1982, the Minerals Management Service was established to assist in the collection of ore and mineral revenues and to oversee all offshore sites beyond the near continental shelf areas. Finally, in 1996, all “interior science and technology functions” were consolidated within the U.S. Geological Survey under the DOI.

The department also administers and enforces environmental protection policies for federal lands. Congress established Yellowstone as the first National Park in 1872, but it was President Woodrow Wilson who would sign the Act that created the National Park Service under the National Parks Organic Act in 1916. Currently, national parks and monuments cover more than 83 million acres across 49 States, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, Saipan, and the Virgin Islands. President Teddy Roosevelt established the first National Wildlife Refuge at Pelican Island, Florida, in 1903.

Wildlife, Rangelands, and Livestock

The protection and management of wildlife, livestock, and rangelands would also become a department focus. From 1902-10, the Bureau of Reclamation was established within the DOI to oversee the construction and management of dams and water systems in the west with the construction of Hoover Dam completed in 1935. Currently, the Bureau of Reclamation supplies water to about 20 percent of the West-or about nine million acres-with dambased hydroelectric generation using 56 power plants online, generating 35,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity in 1996. In fact, energy projects administered within the DOI on federal lands and offshore areas supply nearly 30 percent of our nation’s energy production.

The Taylor Grazing Act would follow in 1934 to regulate the economic use of public lands with a special focus on farmland and range management, mostly due to the disaster of the Great Dust Bowl in the Midwest. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, numerous agencies within the department would utilize thousands of workers employed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and Works Progress Administration (WPA) to build and/or improve the infrastructure of over 50 national parks and monuments, wildlife refuges, fish hatcheries, and protected areas.

In 1940, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was created by uniting the Bureau of Fisheries and the Bureau of Biological Survey. The department’s General Land Office and the Grazing Service were later merged into the newly organized Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in 1946.

The DOI increasingly implements protection policies for nonmainland lands and territories, but that are still under federal protection or administration. In 1873, all U.S. territories were transferred from the Department of State to the DOI, including Alaska, Hawaii, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico (before their conversion to state status). In 1950, the department assumed jurisdiction over American Samoa, Guam, and the Trust Territories of the Pacific Islands; in 1980, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act was enacted, which added more than 47 million acres to the National Park System.

In 2006, the DOI managed more than 500 million acres (or 2 million square kilometers) of surface land, or about 20 percent of the United States. It manages nearly 500 dams and 350 reservoirs through the Bureau of Reclamation; nearly 400 national parks, monuments, seashore sites, and battlefields through the National Park Service; and more than 500 national wildlife refuges through the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Subordinate agencies include the National Park Service, Geological Survey, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, Minerals Management Service, Office of Surface Mining, Bureau of Reclamation, and Office of Insular Affairs.

Bibliography:

N. Clarke and D. C. McCool, Staking Out the Terrain: Power and Performance Among Natural Resource Agencies (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1996);
Johnathan Fairbanks, Becoming a Nation (Rizzoli, 2003).