One year into President Donald Trump’s second term, the Department of the Interior is in turmoil, hobbling many of the agencies overseeing the country’s public lands and waters.
Not only has Interior lost some 11,000 employees, it’s also reeling from a drastic centralization of personnel, moving large numbers of staff into the office of the Interior secretary, Doug Burgum.
That shift has created a hostile work culture, made staff less efficient and broken important lines of communication, former employees say. According to an Inside Climate News analysis of federal workforce data, almost 1,800 workers have left Burgum’s office since the reorganization—the vast majority opting to retire or quit.
Peter, who conducted ICN’s data analysis, and Jake, whose focus includes public lands, describe how they discovered and took on this story, what makes Burgum’s reorganization so unique, and what ripple effects it may cause for America’s vast public lands and waters.
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Thank you,
Jake Bolster
Reporter, Wyoming and the West
Jake Bolster reports on Wyoming and the West for Inside Climate News. Previously, he worked as a freelancer, covering climate change, energy, and the environment across the United States. He holds a Masters in Journalism from Columbia University.
Peter Aldhous
Data Journalist
Peter Aldhous is a science and data reporter based in San Francisco. He got his break in journalism in 1989 as a reporter for Nature in London, fresh from a Ph.D. in animal behavior. Later he worked as European correspondent for Science, news editor for New Scientist and chief news & features editor with Nature, before moving to California in 2005 to become New Scientist’s San Francisco bureau chief. From 2015 to 2022 he worked on the science desk at BuzzFeed News. Peter also teaches investigative and policy reporting, data visualization, and news features writing in the Science Communication Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is a two-time winner in the Global Editors Network Data Journalism Awards. His reporting has also been honored by the Association of British Science Writers, the Association of Health Care Journalists, the Society of Environmental Journalists, and the Royal Statistical Society.
