Bruce Babbitt

  • Served as Secretary for eight years (1993-2000) under President Bill Clinton
  • April 20, 2004

Bruce Babbitt served as Secretary for eight years (1993-2000) under President Clinton, during which time, among other achievements, he promulgated new grazing policies and regulations for public lands; formulated a new consultative use of the Antiquities Act, resulting in presidential monument decrees protecting some four million acres; reorganized the U.S. Geological Survey to include wildlife and conservation biology, transforming it into a full-spectrum natural resources science agency; led the development of regional ecosystem restoration projects in the Florida Everglades and in the California Bay Delta; developed a landscape-scale, multispecies Habitat Conservation Planning (HCP) process under the Endangered Species Act, resulting in more than 400 HCPs covering nearly 20 million acres; and established the National Landscape Conservation System within the Bureau of Land Management to recognize and protect some of the most spectacular places in the U.S. West.

Read a transcript of Bruce Babbitt’s interview