Ryan Zinke was formerly a solidly conservationist Republican during his tenure in the Montana legislature and Congress, who gained support and won seats in solidly red Montana despite his ability to pull in moderate voters who liked his stance on preserving public lands.

There is an interesting crossover between politically conservative recreational enthusiasts (including gun toting NRA'ers), who love hunting, ATVing, camping, fishing, and otherwise enjoying federally-protected access to the large swaths of public lands, and environmentalists and Native Americans who seek preservation of public lands for environmental and cultural reasons.

Zinke's appointment was, perhaps, a lone bright spot for me in the Team of Imbeciles and Greed that Trump appointed to fill his cabinet because he had a pretty stout reputation for conserving public lands.
Zinke historically liked to think of himself in Teddy Roosevelt's model (after all, he was instrumental in bringing to bear the National Parks, National Forests and other federal lands). But the recent decimating of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments (despite overwhelming public comment against it) for reasons that increasingly look like handouts to mining companies and other commercial special interests in derogation of some strong local support for preserving the territories, seems to indicate he is just another in the Trump administration's long line of kowtowers to industry's every whim. It was pretty disappointing to me, a frequent user of public lands out here in the Rocky Mountain west.

This is a real lost opportunity for bridge building between disparate coalitions (although you see some of that cross-ideological unity in the ongoing protests in Utah, with GOP-leaning hunters and fishermen protesting alongside hippies), and unfortunately this craven administration seems to know no bottom in handing over some of the most beautiful country on earth to be commercially exploited.

Side note -- Zinke, who thinks so highly of himself he demands that the DOI building raise the flag when he is in the office and lower it when he is not, was so pissed about this profile (including the amusing and admittedly gratuitous shot at the end about how he rigged his fly fishing gear) that he barred the magazine's reporters from joining a regular conference call. A call, by the way, in which Zinke, following the lead of the House National Resources Committee, headed by Rep Bishop of Utah (a supporter of selling off federal lands to the states), spent time bashing outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia, a longtime supporter of conservationism, for their all-out opposition to the monuments scale-down.