Interior Secretary Gale Norton Resigns

U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Gale Norton has announced her resignation after serving for five years. She was the 48th Secretary and first woman to head the 156-year-old department. Secretary Norton focused on restoring the Florida Everglades, reducing the maintenance backlogs on the National Park Service and the National Wildlife Refuge System, and supporting environmentally sensitive energy production on public lands. She helped in creating Colorado's Great Sand Dunes National Park, the new Glacial Ridge National Wildlife Refuge in Minnesota and the Rocky Mountain Front Conservation Area in Montana.

From 1991 to 1999, she served as Attorney General of Colorado. She also worked as Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Agriculture and, from 1979 to 1983, as a Senior Attorney for the Mountain States Legal Foundation. Norton graduated magna cum laude from the University of Denver in 1975 and earned her law degree from the same university in 1978. Before becoming Interior Secretary, Norton was senior counsel at Brownstein, Hyatt & Farber, P.C. She is married to John Hughes.