The Secretary of the Interior in the then administration of President Ronald Reagan, James Watt, a conservative official admired by the right but rejected by environmentalists and eventually by the president himself, has died. He was 85 years old.
Watt died in Arizona on May 27, his son Eric Watt said in a statement Thursday.
In a government divided between the so-called pragmatists and the hardliners, few were as right-wing as Watt, who called the environmental movement “preservation vs. the people” and the general population a clash between “liberals and Americans.”
In that sense, Watt was the predecessor of combative interior secretaries like Ryan Zinke and David Bernhardt, aggressively pushing for oil, gas and coal companies to entitle public lands, as well as offshore mining. Likewise, he limited the expansion of national parks and monuments.
The US Secretary of the Interior heads the office that oversees the country's natural resources and environment, including national parks and offshore drilling. His position does not correspond to that of Minister of the Interior that is used in other countries.
"While no one's death is to be celebrated, it was the worst of MAGA before it was invented," tweeted David Doniger, strategic director of the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council, alluding to the motto "Make America Great Again." ” (Make America Great Again) by former President Donald Trump.
Watt's supporters saw him as promoting Reagan's conservative values, while opponents were alarmed by his moves and offended by his statements. In 1981, shortly after his appointment, the Sierra Club environmental group gathered 1 million signatures calling for his removal over measures such as clearcutting federal lands in the Northwest, weakening environmental regulations in favor of open-pit mining, and obstacles to attempts to prevent air pollution in Yosemite Valley, California.
