Call your senators and demand that they #RejectPendley

Friends, if you’ve seen any of our emails in the past few months, you’ve undoubtedly heard a lot about anti-public lands zealot William Pendley, the Bureau of Land Management’s acting director.

Pendley has spent his career pushing for the transfer and sale of our public lands so, naturally, former extractive industry lobbyist-turned Interior Secretary David Bernhardt handpicked him to be the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

Now, Secretary Bernhardt has redelegated authority over the bureau to Pendley, even though he’s never been officially nominated as director as required by the U.S. Constitution. Together, we need to stop this.

We’ve launched a new website detailing William Pendley’s extremist views. Visit the website to learn more and then call your senators at 202-224-3121. Demand that they reject Pendley’s takeover.

Putting extremist Pendley in charge of the BLM again is the equivalent of the Trump administration putting America’s public lands up for sale -- worse than a fox in a hen house.

William Pendley clearly doesn’t have the best interests of America’s public lands at heart:

• For nearly 30 years, Pendley served as the president of a “public interest” law firm that advocated selling off our public lands.
• He’s sued his current employer, the Interior Department, in an effort to allow oil and gas drilling on sacred tribal and protected public lands.
• He’s even pushed to remove protections for endangered grizzly bears, telling people to ‘shoot, shovel, and shut up.’

Not only has Pendley spent most of his career fighting against public lands protections -- but he also holds incredibly racist views: He once called immigrants “a cancer.”

Pendley should have never been handed the reins at BLM. We need to speak out. Find out more about his extreme anti-public lands views. Then, please call your senators at 202-224-3121 and demand they oppose William Pendley’s takeover!

-- The Western Values Project Team