Zinke to Speak at Reagan Center

Secretary of the Interior connected to Santa Barbara.

Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke visited Glacier National Park in March and is pictured here promoting the annual pass. He speaks at Santa Barbara's Reagan center on Monday.

Newly appointed United States Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke is scheduled to speak privately Monday evening at the Reagan Ranch Center on Lower State Street. According to Amy Brooker, assistant to the Reagan Ranch director, the event is full and press passes are unavailable.

Zinke, a former Navy SEAL commander, served as a Montana senator from 2009 to 2011, then as the Representative of the state’s at-large congressional district from 2015 until President Donald Trump appointed him to the Department of the Interior’s highest position in December. Since 1992, he has been married to Lolita Zinke, a Santa Barbara native and daughter of Frederick Hand and Consuelo Castro Hand, “the former US Consulate to Peru and a naturalized US citizen,” according to biographical information at GOP.com.

About 75 percent of federal public land is managed by the Interior Department; it’s the umbrella agency of the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, U.S. Geological Survey, Bureau of Reclamation, and the Office of Insular Affairs.