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Trump's pick for managing federal lands doesn't believe the government should have any
Climate and Environment
Trump’s pick for managing federal lands doesn’t believe the government should have any
By Steven Mufson
July 31 at 10:53 AM
President Trump’s pick for managing federal lands doesn’t think the federal government should have any.
This week, Trump’s Interior Secretary David Bernhardt signed an order making the Wyoming native William Perry Pendley the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management. Pendley, former president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, was a senior official in Ronald Reagan’s administration.
The appointment comes as a critical time for the BLM, which manages more than a tenth of the nation’s land and oversees the federal government’s oil, gas and coal leasing program. Two weeks ago, Interior officials announced the department would reassign 84 percent of the bureau’s D.C. staff out West by the end of next year. Only a few dozen employees, including Pendley, would remain in Washington.
After more than two and-a-half years in office, Trump has yet to nominate a permanent director for BLM. By placing Pendley in charge of the agency, Bernhardt has installed a longtime crusader for curtailing the federal government’s control of public lands.
In the three decades since serving under Reagan, Pendley has sued the Interior Department on behalf of an oil and gas prospector, sought to undermine protections of endangered species such as the grizzly bear, and pressed to radically reduce the size of federal lands to make way for development.
“The Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold,” he wrote approvingly in a National Review magazine article in 2016. He said “westerners know that only getting title to much of the land in the West will bring real change.”
....
Steven Mufson covers the business of climate change. Since joining The Washington Post in 1989, he has covered economic policy, China, diplomacy, energy and the White House. Earlier he worked for The Wall Street Journal in New York, London and Johannesburg. Follow https://twitter.com/StevenMufson
Trump’s pick for managing federal lands doesn’t believe the government should have any
By Steven Mufson
July 31 at 10:53 AM
President Trump’s pick for managing federal lands doesn’t think the federal government should have any.
This week, Trump’s Interior Secretary David Bernhardt signed an order making the Wyoming native William Perry Pendley the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management. Pendley, former president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, was a senior official in Ronald Reagan’s administration.
The appointment comes as a critical time for the BLM, which manages more than a tenth of the nation’s land and oversees the federal government’s oil, gas and coal leasing program. Two weeks ago, Interior officials announced the department would reassign 84 percent of the bureau’s D.C. staff out West by the end of next year. Only a few dozen employees, including Pendley, would remain in Washington.
After more than two and-a-half years in office, Trump has yet to nominate a permanent director for BLM. By placing Pendley in charge of the agency, Bernhardt has installed a longtime crusader for curtailing the federal government’s control of public lands.
In the three decades since serving under Reagan, Pendley has sued the Interior Department on behalf of an oil and gas prospector, sought to undermine protections of endangered species such as the grizzly bear, and pressed to radically reduce the size of federal lands to make way for development.
“The Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold,” he wrote approvingly in a National Review magazine article in 2016. He said “westerners know that only getting title to much of the land in the West will bring real change.”
....
Steven Mufson covers the business of climate change. Since joining The Washington Post in 1989, he has covered economic policy, China, diplomacy, energy and the White House. Earlier he worked for The Wall Street Journal in New York, London and Johannesburg. Follow https://twitter.com/StevenMufson
Property Rights Foundation of America®
Biography
William Perry Pendley, Esq.
William Perry Pendley is president and chief legal officer of Mountain States Legal Foundation and has litigated against the United States at the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous federal courts of appeal. Mr. Pendley is a former Marine officer, Capitol Hill lawyer, and Reagan administration official.
In Warriors for the West: Fighting Bureaucrats, Radical Groups, and Liberal Judges on America's Frontier, Mr. Pendley puts human faces on Westerners' historic and often precedent-setting fights against environmental laws, "lying and cheating" bureaucrats and their ethically challenged lawyers, seizure of "private Property" for "public use" without "just compensation," and more. Mr. Pendley is also author of War on the West: Government Tyranny on America's Great Frontier and It Takes A Hero: The Grassroots Battle Against Environmental Oppression.
Born and raised in Cheyenne, Wyoming, he received B.A. and M.A. degrees in Economics and Political Science from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He was a captain in the United States Marine Corps, after which he received his J.D. from the University of Wyoming College of Law, where he was Senior Editor on Land and Water Law Review. He served as an attorney to former Senator Clifford P. Hansen (R-Wyoming) and to the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. During the Reagan Administration, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy and Minerals of the Department of Interior, where he authored President Reagan's National Minerals Policy and Exclusive Economic Zone proclamation. He was a consultant to former Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman, Jr., and was engaged in the private practice of law in the Washington, D.C. area before his return to the West in 1989. He is admitted to practice law in Wyoming, Colorado, Washington, D.C., and Virginia.
E-mail: wppendley@mountainstateslegal.com
Biography
William Perry Pendley, Esq.
William Perry Pendley is president and chief legal officer of Mountain States Legal Foundation and has litigated against the United States at the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous federal courts of appeal. Mr. Pendley is a former Marine officer, Capitol Hill lawyer, and Reagan administration official.
In Warriors for the West: Fighting Bureaucrats, Radical Groups, and Liberal Judges on America's Frontier, Mr. Pendley puts human faces on Westerners' historic and often precedent-setting fights against environmental laws, "lying and cheating" bureaucrats and their ethically challenged lawyers, seizure of "private Property" for "public use" without "just compensation," and more. Mr. Pendley is also author of War on the West: Government Tyranny on America's Great Frontier and It Takes A Hero: The Grassroots Battle Against Environmental Oppression.
Born and raised in Cheyenne, Wyoming, he received B.A. and M.A. degrees in Economics and Political Science from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He was a captain in the United States Marine Corps, after which he received his J.D. from the University of Wyoming College of Law, where he was Senior Editor on Land and Water Law Review. He served as an attorney to former Senator Clifford P. Hansen (R-Wyoming) and to the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. During the Reagan Administration, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy and Minerals of the Department of Interior, where he authored President Reagan's National Minerals Policy and Exclusive Economic Zone proclamation. He was a consultant to former Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman, Jr., and was engaged in the private practice of law in the Washington, D.C. area before his return to the West in 1989. He is admitted to practice law in Wyoming, Colorado, Washington, D.C., and Virginia.
E-mail: wppendley@mountainstateslegal.com
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