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Interior Secretary David Bernhardt extended the temporary appointment of anti-public lands extremist William Perry Pendley to continue to oversee the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the federal agency charged with managing more than 245 million acres of our country's public lands. Secretary Bernhardt's decision arrived just in time for the opening of the BLM's new headquarters in Grand Junction, Colorado, a controversial decision that has been criticized by both lawmakers and BLM retirees as unnecessary and designed to dismantle the agency through the attrition of Washington, D.C.-based employees who are forced to uproot their lives and move across the country, resign, or face termination.
A coalition of more than 91 organizations wrote to Secretary Bernhardt requesting that Pendley be removed from his position or resign, arguing that he is a threat to the agency he now leads. According to Jayson O'Neill, Deputy Director of the Western Values Project, “Secretary Bernhardt’s redelegation of the BLM director’s authority to anti-public lands zealot Pendley is a slap in the face to all public land users and the U.S. Constitution,” and that putting Pendley “in charge of the BLM again is the equivalent of the Trump administration openly putting America’s public lands up for sale.”
2019: The year in swamp
In the final episode of "Go West, Young Podcast" for 2019, we take a look at how multinational mining companies and clients of Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s former lobbying firm are running roughshod over public lands.
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While there’s seemingly almost no political issue today on which our two political parties or their constituents can agree, America's 640+ million acres of federally protected public lands represent a shining exception.”
