Kempthorne watches over natural treasures

WASHINGTON — Beneath an oil painting of Old Faithful erupting, two jarring documents collided Monday on the desk of Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.

One was a New York Times editorial praising him as a "lifeline" for the national parks; the other was a letter from Democrats in the House of Representatives asking him to explain how a Bush political appointee may have improperly removed a California fish from a list of threatened species.

Just another day in his wood-paneled office?

"That's to be expected," the 56-year-old Kempthorne said in an interview. "A lot of people have visceral feelings about many of the issues we deal with at the Department of the Interior. These are America's treasures."

Kempthorne, Idaho's amiable former governor and U.S. senator, returned to Washington a year ago to put a new face on the Bush administration's checkered image on conservation and environment.

He had a long to-do list: Save the decaying national parks, minimize the impact of oil and gas drilling on public land, resolve a decades-long row over endangered species and clean up a department tarnished by allegations of political interference in everything from Indian gaming to wildlife preservation.

He's received high marks so far for his efforts to revive the nation's parks, and his Healthy Lands Initiative is aimed at offsetting the impact of the Bush administration's oil and gas development in the West.

But his hopes for revising the 34-year-old Endangered Species Act are running into political trouble tied to the scandals of his predecessor, Gale Norton.

A case in point is a congressional investigation into the actions of Julie MacDonald, who resigned this month as the Interior Department's deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks.

A holdover from the Norton era, MacDonald left amid allegations that she was involved in removing the Sacramento Splittail fish from the federal threatened and endangered species list to benefit her 80-acre California farm.

Kempthorne has remained silent on the issue, which he calls a "personnel matter."

MacDonald departed after Salon.com, an online political magazine, published a leaked Interior Department draft suggesting a wholesale rewrite of the Endangered Species Act. Environmentalists, who've used the law in a long succession of legal victories, howled.