# House Natural Resources Committee The House Natural Resources Committee holds jurisdiction over federal public lands and their management: the [[Department of the Interior]] and its bureaus, the [[National Park Service]], the [[Bureau of Land Management]], the Bureau of Reclamation, the US Geological Survey, Indian and insular affairs, fisheries and wildlife, mining and offshore energy leasing, and the National Mall and the monumental core of Washington, D.C. ## Why it's on the map Most of what the committee oversees is land, and land is where several of the second Trump administration's signature projects physically sit. The [[White House Ballroom Project]], the [[East Potomac Golf Links Redesign]], the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation and the proposed [[National Garden of American Heroes]] all involve federal parkland, Park Service approvals, or Interior decisions — which places the paperwork behind them inside this committee's reach rather than a spending committee's. That makes the committee an unusual oversight venue: it has subject-matter jurisdiction over vanity construction on public land, a subject that would otherwise fall between the cracks of appropriations and government-operations oversight. In November 2026, whistleblowers told the committee's Democrats that Interior was disposing of records tied to those projects; the resulting preservation demands are recorded on [[Trump Corruption News Log]]. ## Current Leadership (119th Congress, 2025–2027) **Chair: Bruce Westerman** (R-Arkansas), a forester by training, whose chairmanship has focused on timber production, expanded mineral leasing and reducing environmental-review requirements on federal land. **Ranking Member: [[Jared Huffman]]** (D-California), in line to chair the committee in the 120th Congress after Democrats won the House in the 2026 midterms. ## Connections - [[Department of the Interior]] — the committee's principal oversight target - [[National Park Service]] — the agency that approves construction in the monumental core - [[Trump Corruption News Log]] — the records-preservation fight of November 2026 - [[Congressional Committees Tree]] — where this committee sits in the House structure