Time

The Interior Department has always been a split agency. On one hand, it’s the home of the National Parks Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service, its officials stewards to hundreds of millions of acres of public lands, including some of the most beautiful and pristine territory in the United States. On the other hand, it’s also home to the Office of Surface Mining and the Bureau of Land Management, responsible for overseeing the multi-billion dollar oil, gas and mining practices that take place—and sometimes pollute—public land. To both protect the land and profit from it is an impossible, contradictory charge, and the Interior Department usually leans one way or the other, depending on the person in charge.