The Department of the Interior appears to be preparing for another major reorganization.
Recent reporting indicates that the National Park Service and other Interior bureaus are considering significant organizational changes, even as employees remain largely in the dark about what those changes will look like. Draft planning documents obtained by reporters suggest that Interior is contemplating yet another broad reshuffling.
That should concern anyone who cares about the effective management of our national parks and public lands.
Reorganizations are not inherently bad. Federal agencies should periodically examine whether their structures still serve their missions. But major organizational change should begin with a clearly identified problem, evidence that the proposed solution will address it, and meaningful input from the people who understand the agency’s work.
So far, Interior has provided little public information about what it intends to change, why another reorganization is necessary, or how it would improve the department’s ability to carry out its mission.
And that matters because Interior is not starting from a position of stability.
In April 2025, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ordered the consolidation of thousands of administrative, information technology, communications, and other employees under the Office of the Secretary. Interior said the move would produce efficiencies and improve accountability.
A year later, however, Interior told PEER that it could locate no records documenting the cost savings it had promised or the costs imposed on individual bureaus as a result of the restructuring.
Interior has launched two additional reorganizations this year. In January, Secretary Burgum established the Wildland Fire Service, consolidating functions previously spread across the Department. The Department remerged the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement into the Marine Minerals Administration in July. These reorganizations, immensely consequential for our parched lands and fragile waters, are yet to be fully implemented.
Now, with Interior already operating through significant staffing reductions and organizational disruption, the department appears ready to reorganize further.
It is a strange moment to undertake another sweeping restructuring without explaining what the prior ones accomplish or seeing them through.
For the National Park Service in particular, the practical consequences could be significant. Former park superintendents have warned Interior that parks are already struggling with staffing and management challenges and that another poorly planned reorganization could make those problems worse.
A federal agency is more than boxes on an organizational chart. Its ability to function depends on experienced people knowing where authority rests, who is responsible for particular decisions, and how expertise reaches the officials making those decisions.
Every time those relationships are disrupted, there are costs.
Those costs become especially important if a reorganization shifts additional authority away from career employees and toward political leadership.
Interior manages hundreds of millions of acres of public lands, oversees national parks and wildlife refuges, administers major energy and mineral programs, manages water resources, carries out tribal trust responsibilities, and makes decisions involving billions of dollars in federal spending. Decisions inside this department have enormous consequences for communities, taxpayers, and public resources.
The question is therefore not simply whether a new organizational structure is more efficient on paper. It is whether the structure preserves the expertise, internal checks, and professional judgment necessary to make sound decisions.
That question is especially urgent as Interior considers major new uses of public lands. Recent reporting shows that the Bureau of Land Management is reviewing at least a dozen proposals for data centers and related infrastructure covering more than 17,600 acres of federal land across six Western states. Members of Congress have now asked Interior for more information about those proposals and the process by which public lands could be made available for development.
Secretary Burgum has also made expanded energy and data-center development a major departmental priority. Interior itself says its current modernization efforts are intended in part to accelerate decision-making and improve coordination across the department’s bureaus.
That makes the structure of the department more than an internal management question.
If Interior centralizes more decisions at the same time it is reducing career staffing and considering consequential new uses of public land, the public deserves to know what authority is moving, who will exercise it, and what safeguards will remain in place.
There is also a useful precedent here.
During Interior’s earlier reorganization under Secretary Ryan Zinke, the department publicly emphasized consultation with employees, states, Congress, and other stakeholders and described its goals and proposed structure in considerable detail.
Whatever one thinks of that reorganization, the principle was sound: large structural changes to an agency with enormous public responsibilities should not be designed behind closed doors.
Before Interior moves ahead, Congress and the public should be asking some basic questions:
- What exactly is being reorganized?
- What specific problem is the change intended to solve?
- What evidence shows that the proposed structure will improve Interior’s performance?
- Which authorities will move from career officials to political appointees?
- How will the changes affect staffing and expertise?
- And what safeguards will ensure that decisions involving contracts, public lands and other public resources remain subject to meaningful review?
Interior has already undergone enormous change.
Before Secretary Burgum reshuffles it again, he should explain why.
The department’s mission is too important — and the consequences of getting this wrong are too great — for another reorganization built on secrecy, disruption, and unproven promises.
Tony Irish is PEER’s Senior Counsel. He previously served for 21 years at the Department of the Interior.