TIME: For most cabinet officers, when they have to resolve a conflict, if it's a question of in general there's a fairly easy compromise—"How big is the tax cut, how much are we going to spend on Medicare?"—there's a fairly easy compromise.

You've got some tough ones—you have to balance questions of public good, local residence, national good and individual rights. Do you have any general approach you bring to those questions?

Gale Norton: To a large extent, our mission has to be deciding where the right places are for different kinds of activities, people have a lot of questions right now about how much oil and gas production is appropriate. Nobody thinks there should be zero and, at the other extreme, nobody says we should be having oil and gas production in the middle of Yosemite or Yellowstone. It's a question of just finding that right point and that means having a lot of focus on different places in the West and what makes sense from a scientific and ecological type of perspective, what makes sense from the local citizens input into it and how we go through the process of trying to reach decisions. Very often you find a lot of conflict when you discuss the issues in the abstract. When you sit down and pull together a group of effective people who will talk to you about how you might approach things, there are a lot more solutions out there. You find a lot more common ground when you really get people together in a problem solving way.

TIME: But aren't there times when it's kind of a zero sum? I guess in the case of the Klamath river, the water levels are either high enough for the fish or low enough for the farmers. There's kind of no middle ground. It must be tough on some of those.

Norton: That was a very difficult situation. That was something I hope we can avoid in the future with more long term planning on that. We're trying to look ahead now to how we can avoid that problem in the future. There are some things I think we may be able to do to avoid that, looking at retirement of some of the lands as opposed to active agricultural use; looking at the science [of] the endangered species so that we really have an understanding of that. There was some concern this time about the scientific basis for the decision making; trying to look at the groundwater solutions and groundwater being added to the system was one way to balance out the drought years. There are a number of different types of approaches we can look at to pull people together and see what kind of problem solving we can do. That sometimes requires time. We didn't have the time to do that sort of a planning process [in this case].

TIME: The administration has taken a lot of hits from the environmental groups. Is there peace to be made?

Norton: We are now in the process of talking about our environmental approaches. We want to look at solutions that will bring people together to talk about common ground. Capturing local innovation and local knowledge is very helpful in encouraging people to find creative solutions—there are wonderful things that have been done to bring together agriculture and wildlife. Most farmers would be delighted to have wildlife on their property. We've tended to create a conflict situation that doesn't encourage that kind of activity on the part of farmers and I think there are ways of getting past that. That's one of the approaches that we've been talking about—the Landowner Incentive Program. It's something that President Bush is proposing. That's an area where, as I talk to a lot of environmental groups, we have a lot of common ground. There is widespread support for that kind of an approach. That's the type of thing we want to emphasize. It doesn't make headlines for anyone to write about the areas where we have common ground, so the incentive process is to talk about areas of conflict. We want to minimize the conflict and focus on mechanisms that will allow us to have more cooperative decision making and cooperation.

TIME: But some critics have felt that where you have locally worked out situations, like grizzlies in Yellowstone, the administration has trampled on them. Do you have any response to that?

Norton: In general I think that is a good approach. And the idea of getting industry and ranchers and local people together to talk about solutions is an approach that I very much support. In this case the state and local governments did not support the proposal of reintroducing grizzly bears. There is a real concern about the loss of human life because of that proposal. And so we thought it made sense to re-examine it. We're now in the comment period for reexamination.

TIME: And just to stay on Yellowstone for a second, what about the question of snowmobiling there?

Norton: We have those who say that absolutely there should be no snowmobiles in public lands. And we have those who say there should be no supervision, no speed limits and no control of any kind and what we're looking for is some common ground—some commonsense kind of approaches. I think there needs to be supervision over what is happening with snowmobiles. We need to make sure that people are driving in a reasonable fashion. We have been talking with manufacturers about moving towards the newer, much less polluting snowmobiles. It's absolutely clear that we would only allow people to operate on what would otherwise be paved roads so that they are not going off into areas that are ordinarily undisturbed. They would be confined to areas where in the summer people would be driving their cars.

TIME: I don't have to tell you coming from Colorado how many people in the West feel that there's just too big a federal presence out there. They control too much land. There are too many regulations. Do you feel that the federal government controls too much land in the West?

Norton: I think a lot of people in other parts of the country don't understand the facts that cause westerners to have that perception. In many of those states the federal government owns over half of the land. In Arizona, I was talking with someone the other days and they were saying if you take out the government elements including tribal government lands, only 12 percent of the land is privately owned. That is a very big difference from most other states. Because of that the federal policies have a tremendous impact, [so] local input and local involvement is very important. Definitely there are national priorities, and westerners want to see the preservation of lands and approaches to lands that will preserve the things that are environmentally valuable.

TIME: So would you like to see the amount of land under federal control reduced?

Norton: That's not the approach we'll be taking. There are some proposals that make sense and some mechanisms that make sense, not reducing the overall size of federal ownership, but perhaps making sure that the lands owned by the federal government are the right ones. In the Las Vegas area there is a very interesting program that is under way under legislation passed by Congress in '99 that auctions off some federally owned land right in the Las Vegas area. Las Vegas can't expand, the suburbs can't expand because of federal ownership of the land. So our last sale brought in over $50 million and that money is then used for acquiring sensitive habitats and wetland areas. The money's available for habitat enhancement, recreation facilities. So really, [the program is] making sure that the federally owned lands are going to be much better for environmental enhancement and for recreational activities, which is probably better than having the government just prevent Las Vegas from expanding.

TIME: Among the areas of government control that people have been interested in are these national monuments, especially the ones created at the end of the Clinton administration. What should people expect of those monuments? And is there any possibility of them reverting back their original status?

Norton: Once again, I think it's important for people to understand the context and that if you put all the monuments together the area in question is the size of Connecticut. In some cases there was a local planning process, in many cases there was not. Local officials were not consulted. The state governors were not consulted. The members of Congress were not consulted. We're having to do now what is usually done beforehand. Usually you go through the planning process and decide what the uses should be, decide what the budget should be, decide exactly how you balance the interests and then go ahead and designate the property. That's not what was done here. We have asked governors, Congress and local elected officials for a first round of feedback about the monument designations. Some of the monuments have tremendous local support, so in those areas the things we have to look at are how do we build a visitors center and develop a budget. In others there are concerns about the ways the boundaries were drawn and we might work with Congress to redraw them. It should be part of an overall process. We are not planning any across-the-board changes.

TIME: Do you feel a need to go to these monuments before you render final decisions?

Norton: Yes and no. I certainly want to visit and see the areas as we are talking about [them]. But it's not possible to do that. And it shouldn't be my impression that makes the final decision on a lot of things. There should be a process of people who really know the planning best. So that means the biologists who understand the wildlife, the local environmental groups, the farmers and ranchers and especially elected officials representing the areas should all play a role in that process. I would much rather support that type of decision making instead of just walking in, spending two hours and saying Œthis should be the future.¹

TIME: Getting back to the public perception of the administration's environmental policies—various polls have shown a lot of public skepticism. Do you attribute that to not getting your message out? Is it the opposition of the environmental groups? Or is it the policies themselves?

Norton: To a certain extent it is because we are facing realities. When we talk about the energy crisis and our nation's need for energy in the long term, it would be much easier to just assume that we don't have to make tough choices, to say that we can all continue doing everything we've always done in our economy—heating our homes and driving our cars—and magically the energy will appear. That is not the approach this administration takes. We want to learn about the issues, study the hard questions and propose real world solutions. That's not the way the political process often operates. It's easy, for example, to do what has happened in the past with [for example] natural gas: "We want to use more natural gas because it's an environmentally friendly fuel. " We increased the demand because of that but we didn't acknowledge that we need the supply that goes with that demand. This administration has said that if we want the benefits of natural gas we also need to look at where the supply comes from in the long term. Our approach is one of going forward with that in an environmentally responsible way. We want to have the sources of supply studied. We want to have a process of deciding the appropriate place for that to come from.

TIME: One of those outstanding questions is nuclear power. What do you see happening with nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain?

Norton: Since my department is not as involved in that as some of the others I'll defer to them.

TIME: Is drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve basically dead?

Norton: ANWR is a huge potential source of energy for the future and it is something that needs to be considered in any long-term energy plan. We have to have the national debate and discussion about where our sources should come from. Because of its vast resources, logically ANWR should be on the table. I've been there in the winter when the production activity occurs and I've seen it in the summer. The approaches that they are using are incredibly extensive in trying to protect the environment. They use ice roads instead of paving highways. They truly do melt away when the summer comes. The very extensive environment protections there are the type of thing that is possible when you have a large potential source.

TIME:But whatever the merits, isn't it basically dead?

Norton: It is certainly not dead. It is something that has to be a part of the process. The discussion has tended to be yes or no on ANWR. The reality is "What are the best places to meet our energy needs? What is the best mix of conservation and supply? What's better?" There aren't that many other places. We're certainly talking about a small area of a refuge the size of South Carolina—it's an area that's been set aside for the last 20 years at least for potential development. It never has been a wilderness area.

TIME: Looking to the future, will your successors in 50 and 100 years still be confronting the same issues? Is this a perennial conflict?

Norton: Absolutely. These issues are going to continue. In a certain way the issues that this department faces are like local zoning issues, because we have a fourth of the land in the country and we're trying to figure out the appropriate uses. The disputes are not going to go away on Department of Interior-owned lands any more than they will elsewhere. These debates will continue. One of the other issues we deal with is our responsibility for Indian-owned assets. I saw a newspaper front page the other day that talked about the problems managing the Indian assets that sounded like some of our recent headlines. The article was dated July 6, 1876—the other article on the front page reported that Custer had died. These issues are ones that have continued through the 152-year history of this department and I anticipate that they will continue.

TIME: You've been called a libertarian.

Norton: I tend to dislike authoritarian approaches. I believe people should make decisions about their lives. I believe decisions made from behind a desk in Washington seldom reflect the knowledge and love that people have of their own communities and that is the way that I approach issues. It's very different than a top-down, big government approach.