A Houston Investment Banker Now Has Control Of America's National Parks

Attacking America’s National Parks was among the first and most aggressive actions of Trump 2.0. The shots began earlier this year when, together with Elon Musk, Trump DOGEd hundreds of park rangers, scientists, and land managers. Many were career professionals who managed iconic places like Glacier, Yellowstone, Denali, Arches, and Yosemite. These are places so special that Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Wallace Stegner famously labeled our national parks as “The best idea we ever had. ” But Trump, who I am sure has never heard of Wallace Stegner, was just getting started, and it got worse when, a few weeks later, the administration called for further draconian cuts of more than $1.2 billion to the National Park Service (NPS) Budget.

One of many billboards across the country protesting DOGE attacks on National Parks

Then late last week, Trump’s billionaire and friend-of-big-oil Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, delivered another blow when he quietly installed Kevin Lilly, an investment banker from Houston, to the post of Assistant Secretary of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, an incredibly important position entrusted with oeverseeing all of America’s 63 National Parks and 570 national wildlife refuges and marine national monuments.

Houston Investment Banker, Kevin Lilly

Burgum gave no reason or justification for Lilly’s selection, and like many other Trump administration staffing decisions, the Houston banker is not actually “officially nominated.” Instead, Burgum has installed Lilly as “acting” using the federal vacancies reform act, which allows a legal loophole for temporarily filling positions, and importantly for the Trump administration, avoids the traditional scrutiny of the Senate confirmation process, where the public has a chance to weigh in.¹

Following Lilly’s installation at Interior, my fellow Montanan Jayson O’Neill, who is a spokesman for Save Our Parks, pressed the Interior Department about the ethics and dubious legality of this backdoor staffing move. A testy response from the Interior spokesperson refused to comment on staffing decisions. Still, they ended with a boastful admission: “Just to clarify: Kevin Lilly is legally performing the duties of the Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks.”²

O’Neill is right to question Lilly’s appointment because the Texan possesses not even a scintilla of pertinent experience; zero history in wildlife, public land, water, conservation, federal government, or parks. I could find not one single picture, social media post, or account of him even visiting or commenting on any of our national parks or refuges. It’s pretty obvious, this ain’t the guy that anyone who cares about our National Parks would pick to lead them.

Perhaps that’s the point. Doug Burgum, who is Kevin Lilly’s boss, began his tenure at Interior by boldly demanding the sale of vast swaths of public land.³ Burgum has also become reviled among national parks advocates for his continued insistence that America’s public lands are nothing more than a part of “the largest balance sheet in the world.”⁴ And he’s followed those statements with repeated policy moves aimed at selling hundreds of thousands of acres, weakening environmental laws, and opening up even sensitive areas adjacent to national parks for industrial development on a frightening scale.⁵

The Trump Administration refuses to comment on why Lilly was selected as Burgum’s most crucial lieutenant. But we do know that Trump makes no secret of valuing wealth, fealty, and a willingness to burn it all down. And we know that Lilly made a boatload of money by exploiting big balance sheets.

None of this is hard to piece together. Let’s start with Lilly’s long career in money, managing wealth, and connecting to the energy industry. It’s impressive, and his Southwestern University trustee bio page lays it out:

“Kevin J. Lilly was a Founding Partner at Avalon Advisors, the largest privately owned wealth management firm in Texas. In 2023, Avalon merged with CI Financial, the nation’s largest independent wealth advisory firm. Prior to founding Avalon in 2001, Kevin spent five years in Morgan Stanley’s Private Wealth Management Division, assisting the company in starting its first Private Wealth office in Texas. From 1989 to 1996, he was with Goldman Sachs’ Private Wealth Management Division, first in New York and then in Houston.”

Lilly also has military experience, and Trump loves a guy who will look the part, obey orders, and execute his mission.

“Lilly was commissioned as a Lieutenant (Cavalry) in the U.S. Army via ROTC at The University of Texas at Austin. He served as a tank platoon leader and tank battalion staff officer and had one overseas deployment. Lilly left federal service as a Captain.”⁶

Perhaps most important for Burgum and Trump is Lilly’s proven willingness to fire career staffers and twist an agency into a tool for Trump’s broader culture war goals, and here, too, Lilly has a track record. In 2017, Republican Governor Abbott appointed him to head the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, a formerly sleepy state agency designed to regulate Alcohol in Texas. (An aside here - I did not think they regulated alcohol in Texas??) Anyway, in a long and telling “Maybe God” podcast interview entitled “Is Sex Trafficking the Work of the Devil?”, Lilly lays bare his mission to convert that agency into a vast and expanded law enforcement operation aimed at confronting human trafficking, or as he says, “delivering the cup of God’s wrath.”

Lilly’s press interview on ABC13 in Houston

To be clear, I am all for aggressive actions against human trafficking, but importantly for his new work at NPS, the takeaway here is that Lilly is more than willing to bend agencies and fire people in the process.

“You know, look, anytime you have to go into a broken system and try to fix it, there's a lot of pain involved and difficult decisions that had to be made. Sometimes people have to lose their jobs.”⁷

My guess is that this is just exactly what it looks like: Kevin Lilly is connected to big money at giant corporations, and so he has been placed at Interior to do the bidding of those corporations, by assessing the “value” of selling our public lands, and weakening the agencies that manage them.

But….I admit, after reading about his dedication to ending sex trafficking, I do hold out a tiny sliver of optimism that just maybe Mr. Lilly will find a bit of time to spill a little of God’s wrath in DC, right on those who refuse to release the details of Trump’s involvement in the human trafficking in the Epstein files.

1. https://www.sfgate.com/national-parks/article/former-investment-banker-running-national-parks-20791932.php

2. https://www.sfgate.com/national-parks/article/former-investment-banker-running-national-parks-20791932.php

3. https://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2025/05/advisory-burgum-hill-interior-eyes-public-lands-sales-steep-budget-cuts

4. https://www.eenews.net/articles/4-things-to-know-about-doug-burgums-balance-sheet-pitch/

5. https://www.nrdc.org/media/trump-interior-secretarys-orders-make-public-lands-ground-zero-drilling-mining

6. https://rotaryhouston.org/event/kevin-j--lilly--chairman--tabc

7. https://www.maybegodpod.com/maybe-god-episode-111-Is-Sex-Trafficking-The-Work-of-the-Devil