Ryan Zinke Quotes

In my 31 years in Congress, I have seen a lot of changes. We made some substantial policy changes that have improved our parks system and our public lands.

The Great American Outdoors Act is a significant opportunity to invest in our public lands, including treasures in the 11th District like the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge and Morristown National Historical Park.

Protecting all this land, working with the President to establish all these monuments, to, you know... I think the President has a land protection record that's second to no one in this century, maybe Teddy Roosevelt.

Americans have long recognized the need to protect our public lands and their vast resources.

It's a new day at the Department of Interior, and we need to examine what makes the most sense for the American people. These are American resources and American treasures, and we need to make sure we're providing the right kind of protection, oversight and stewardship of these resources for the American people.

The Great American Outdoors Act is landmark conservation legislation to protect our public lands, including right here in New Jersey.

I will protect public lands.

As someone who grew up in a logging and rail town and hiking in Glacier National Park, I am honored and humbled to be asked to serve Montana and America as secretary of interior.

Wilderness, like the national park system, was an American idea.

I'm excited and encouraged to see people getting involved with their public lands and forests. We really need the public's help to repair these heavily used recreation sites.

We have a certain group of people in this country that seem to want to lock up our national treasures, our national parks, and cherished places and keep the public from enjoying them.

In the hierarchy of public lands, national parks by law have been above the rest: America's most special places, where natural beauty and all its attendant pleasures - quiet waters, the scents of fir and balsam, the hoot of an owl, and the dark of a night sky unsullied by city lights - are sacrosanct.

True conservation means protecting the entire habitat.

We must be vigilant in protecting Nevada's outdoor heritage and make this a top priority.

Congress has an obligation to protect our country's natural beauty, embodied in our nation's parks, rivers, and breathtaking landscapes.

As a nation, we owe a great deal to the National Audubon Society, one of our most distinguished and important environmental organizations, and all those who work to protect America's open land and waterways.

I cannot in good conscience vote for final passage of legislation that would pave the way to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

Nearly every president in the past 100 years has declared national monuments, from Teddy Roosevelt creating the Grand Canyon National Monument to George W. Bush preserving 10 islands and 140,000 square miles of ocean waters in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

Wilderness designations should not be the result of a quid pro quo. They should rise or fall on their own merits.

So that was Reagan's political problem. As a rancher in California, he was an environmentalist himself. But the President of the United States doesn't control everything that happens in Washington.

Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.

This is the way federal land management should work. Cooperation, not confrontation, should be the hallmark of conservation efforts.

It was a Republican, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who first protected the Arctic Refuge to balance the oil development at Prudhoe Bay with responsible conservation.

While it is important to maintain a balanced approach to solving our nation's energy problems, we must commit ourselves to recognize some areas as 'off limits,' and the Artic National Wildlife Reserve is a national symbol of that commitment.

We need to protect our wilderness areas and national parks. Everywhere you travel, you see blight, denuded mountains, logging. If people know what's going on, they'll become activists to safeguard those places.