Environmental groups have given a guarded response to Barack Obama's newest cabinet picks, just days after hailing his assembly of the "green dream team".
Obama rolled out the latest additions to his team at a press conference in Chicago, choosing the Colorado Senator, Ken Salazar, as his secretary of the interior and the former Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack, for agriculture.
Obama said with Salazar that the interior department would be led by a man with a more "pro-active vision" when it came to protecting wildlife and wilderness. He said that Salazar and Vilsack would "serve not big agribusiness or Washington influence peddlers but family farmers and the American people".
There was a mixed response to both choices - unlike the near universal acclaim from greens this week for Obama's announcement of the Nobel laureate, Steven Chu, as energy secretary, and the Al Gore supporter, Carol Browner, as the new White House climate "tsarina".
Obama's pick as interior secretary had been keenly anticipated by environmentalists - the post oversees public land use and mineral rights. After the Environmental Protection Agency, the interior department is generally viewed as the agency most damaged by the last eight years of environmentally unfriendly policies from George W Bush.
An inspector general's report published this week accused Bush's interior department of running a "secret society" of politically motivated officials who colluded to strip away wildlife protections from species at risk of going extinct. It said the officials tampered with scientific reports on at least a dozen occasions to strip away protections for endangered fish and other wildlife.
While Salazar has supported offshore drilling for oil, he also has a strong record on conservation and opposed Bush's plans to set aside huge tracts of land in the Rocky Mountain West for highly polluting oil shale extraction. But this was not enough to convince the 150 green organisations that supported other contenders for the post, sending a petition to Obama backing Salazar's rivals.
Green organisations see Salazar, a rancher, as too closely tied to old-fashioned western industries like mining. Word of the Colorado Senator's appointment was welcomed by mining organisations.
The Centre for Biological Diversity, a green organisation based in Arizona, said Salazar lacked the strong record on reform needed to clean up the department. It noted Salazar voted against increased fuel efficiency standards for US government vehicles.
"Obama's choices for secretary of energy and his climate change tsar indicate a determined willingness to take on global warming," Kieran Suckling, the centre's director, said. "That team will be weakened by the addition of Ken Salazar, who has fought against federal action on global warming, against higher fuel efficiency standards, and for increased oil drilling and oil subsidies."
Other organisations were more positive about the choice. "He has been a very vocal critic of the Bush administration's reckless approach to rampant land development in the west," said Josh Dorner, a spokesman for the Sierra Club.
There was also a mixed response to the appointment of Vilsack, 58, a former Iowa governor who supported Hillary Clinton for presidential candidate.
As governor of America's major corn producing state, Vilsack has been an advocate of the ethanol industry. That has raised concerns among some environmentalists because his new role will put him in charge of America's policy on biofuels.
"From our perspective biofuels like corn-based ethanol cause tremendous damage around the world," said Glenn Hurowitz, media director of Greenpeace USA.
"We hope that the next agriculture secretary is realistic about the damage that ethanol mandates do to the climate." Biofuels have been charged with barely reducing carbon emissions and forcing up global food prices.