By Tom Kenworthy | Climate Progress
Name a big issue that the Department of the Interior has been involved in during the Obama and Clinton administrations, and more likely than not David J. Hayes has been in the thick of it.
Now Hayes, who has served as the department’s number two in both administrations, is leaving government service — but not before he leaves his fingerprints on one more big initiative, and a critical one at that.
Historically, the Interior Department, especially its Bureau of Land Management, which oversees energy development on some 700 million acres of land, has tended to look at public land development projects like mining and oil and gas in isolation, without enough consideration for broad ecosystem effects stretching across large landscapes. That orientation began to shift as the Obama administration ramped up efforts to bring large-scale solar energy development to federal lands in the states in the southwest.
