Little is likely to change under Bernhardt. The Interior Department oversees the nation’s public lands, which encompass nearly a quarter of its total area. This makes the agency a kind of extra-powerful environmental regulator, especially out West, where it owns 47 percent of the territory. The department also includes the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Under Zinke, the agency has gone on a spree of deregulation. It has cut more than 1 million acres of wilderness out of Bears Ears National Monument in Utah and with help from Congress, it has opened up 19 million acres in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration. The agency is also in the process of overhauling the Endangered Species Act, the muscular 1973 law that helped save the bald eagle, the gray wolf, and the American crocodile from extinction.

Many of Zinke’s efforts seemed particularly helpful for fossil-fuel companies, which can lease public land from the government and then sell the oil or coal they find there. Near the end of his term, President Barack Obama blocked the Interior Department from releasing any land for coal mining. Zinke, by contrast, has sped up the process of obtaining these leases for new oil and gas drilling.

Read: Trump’s nativism is transforming the physical landscape

Every single one of these initiatives is almost certain to continue under Bernhardt. What will not continue is Zinke’s penchant for publicity. The man embraced his role as the Cabinet’s cowboy. He arrived to his first day at the department on horseback, wearing a Stetson. A former Navy SEAL, he transplanted an arcane military ritual onto his new life as a downtown bureaucrat: Whenever he walked into the Interior Department’s downtown-D.C. headquarters, he ordered his staff to fly a special flag.

In practice, he was less outdoorsman, more hapless dad. He struggled to rig a fishing reel correctly. One of his minor scandals involved “Make America Great Again”–branded socks. Last summer, he reportedly threatened Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican of Alaska, over her vote against Obamacare repeal. Then, seemingly after realizing that she is in charge of funding the Interior Department, he promptly backtracked. (Zinke has called the claim that he threatened Murkowski “laughable,” but his threats were first reported by Dan Sullivan, Alaska’s other Republican senator.)

That hubris made him a terrific target for Democrats. They hoped to use his personal misdeeds to point to the larger pattern of deregulation and industry friendliness at his department. Maybe, eventually, some day, when the public hated him enough, they could force him to resign.

Zinke went and resigned for them. “After 30 years of public service, I cannot justify spending thousands of dollars defending myself and my family against false allegations,” he said Saturday.