“He had the Interior pin on, but the bison was facing the other direction,” Zinke said of Watt’s portrait. “That was his way of saying he was taking the department in a different direction.”

Zinke announced his own plans to put the Interior Department on a new heading, with a pledge to push more decision-making to the park supervisor level at the expense of Washington, D.C. and regional managers. A former Navy SEAL, Zinke also spoke of breaking down some of the “stovepipes” of separate agencies like the way the military uses joint command.

That could mean more cooperation with the Agriculture Department’s U.S. Forest Service, to see if overflow park visitors might shift to trails and campgrounds on national forest sites. It might also involve shifting workers between parks as seasonal changes redirect visitor flows.

But budgets will remain a challenge. Park superintendents send their spending plans up to Zinke, who then sends a number to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. What comes back, in the form of the president’s budget plan, is what Zinke has to work with.

“It’s really hard to make the justification for capital improvement investments when you don’t have money to maintain what you already have,” Smith said.