WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Interior Department told senators Tuesday that completing billions of dollars in backlogged projects at national parks should be a major part of the new president’s plans to revamp aging roads, bridges and transportation hubs.

Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Montana Republican who is nominated to serve as the next interior secretary, told the Senate Natural Resources Committee that Trump’s ambitious infrastructure spending plans should “prioritize the estimated $12.5 billion in backlog of maintenance and repair” at hundreds of national parks across the country.

Trump “is committed to a jobs and infrastructure bill, and I am going to need your help in making sure that bill includes shoring up our nation’s treasures,” Zinke said.

Zinke’s comments were some of the first by a Trump nominee on infrastructure spending, a topic that congressional Republicans have been eyeing warily amid concerns about the cost and scope of Trump’s ambitions.

Disclosing few details, Trump has pledged that his infrastructure program would cost half a trillion to a trillion dollars, paid for with a mix of federal dollars and possibly tax credits.

A lifelong hunter and fisherman, Zinke is set to face questions about where he stands on selling vast swaths of federal lands to states or other entities and how he will manage the abundance of federal resources such as coal and natural gas, especially in the context of climate change.

Zinke, 55, has already declared that he opposes selling land owned by the public, words he likely will repeat before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Although he often votes against environmentalists on issues from coal extraction to oil and gas drilling — earning him a 3 percent voting score from the League of Conservation Voters — his position against federal land sales was serious enough for him to quit the GOP platform-writing committee last summer after the group included language that would have transferred federal land to states.

That stance and resignation put the first-term congressman on par with the President-elect Donald Trump, who has also said he wants to keep federal land.

“What I saw was a platform that was more divisive than uniting,” Zinke said when he left the committee. “At this point, I think it’s better to show leadership.”

The nominee’s position on climate change is likely to come up during the hearing. It’s a concern of conservationists at Interior because of the department’s oversight of the fossil fuels under those federal lands and their potential for increasing greenhouse gases. Experts estimate that 40 percent of the coal burned in the United States comes from land owned by the federal government. As secretary, Zinke would wield power over hundreds of millions of acres and the oil and minerals beneath them.

In 2010, while in the Montana legislature, he was one of more than a thousand lawmakers nationwide who signed a letter calling for clean-energy jobs and climate-change legislation from President Obama and Congress. Four years later, however, a former chair of the Montana Conservation Voters accused him of denying that climate change is occurring and caused by burning fossil fuels.

Zinke campaigned for Congress on a platform of achieving North American energy dependence, and he criticized as unnecessary a recent Interior Department plan to reduce inadvertent releases of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that scientists say is far worse than carbon emissions in contributing to global warming.

“Clean air and clean water are absolute top priorities when we talk about responsible energy development. However, the final rule issued by the Obama administration does nothing to further protect our resources,” he said in a statement. “This rule is a stark reminder that we need to invest in infrastructure projects like the Keystone pipeline, so we don’t need to flare excess gas.”

His support of Keystone pleases the oil and gas industry but is a another worry for conservationists, who fear that Trump will attempt to resurrect the billion-dollar project the Obama administration halted in September.

If confirmed, Zinke also would be the steward of the National Park Service and such vast treasures as Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Great Smoky Mountains, as well as the Fish and Wildlife Service and its huge wildlife refuges. He would have oversight of the Endangered Species Act, with a say over what animals are listed, and the National Mall, the capital’s most visited tourist destination.

The secretary guides the Bureau of Land Management’s oversight of the sagebrush sea, an area covering 11 western states, where conservationists and energy companies have fought over projects threatening the health of the greater sage grouse. And the person chosen by the secretary to lead Fish and Wildlife determines which animals get endangered-species protection — and which do not.