In January, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke traveled to Las Vegas to mingle at the SHOT Show, an annual gathering of the shooting, hunting and outdoor trade industries. The people there were “all great conservationists, really good people, dedicated to the outdoors,” he said in an interview with NRA-TV.

An avid hunter and angler himself, Zinke has often said that the best stewards of wildlife are America’s sportsmen and -women. But after taking over the Department of the Interior in March 2017, he made quick work of angering some of those would-be supporters.

Zinke and his team focused on boosting fossil fuel production and rolling back national monument protections. And he repeatedly…