The Zinke effect: how the US interior department became a tool of big business

Trump's interior secretary has been remaking the agency charged with protecting public lands as an ally of big energy, e-mails and records reveal

Since his first day on the job, when he surrounded himself with a National Park Service police escort and rode through Washington DC on a white-nosed horse named Tonto, the US interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, has exhibited a flair for ostentation.

Not long after taking office in March 2017, the new secretary started flying a special flag, adorned with the agency's bison seal, above the interior department's elegant New Deal-era headquarters. At a cost of more than $2,000, he also commissioned commemorative coins emblazoned with his name to hand out to visitors and staff. He replaced the doors in his office to the tune of more than $130,000, and installed a hunting-themed arcade game in the department's cafeteria.