Vermillion Cliffs National Monument in Northern Arizona./Photo by Bureau of Land Management /Flickr/CC BY 2.0
By Parker Shea | Arizona Mirror
Conservationists and environmental groups are concerned a series of changes within the Bureau of Land Management will lead to more oil, gas and mining uses of public lands.
Ardent public land critic William Perry Pendley last month assumed leadership of the BLM, causing outcry and criticism from conservation and environmentalist groups.
Pendley, a former Department of the Interior appointee in the Reagan administration, is known as a prominent anti-public land litigator. He formerly served as president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, an anti-public land nonprofit group, and has several times sued the federal government on behalf of private extraction interests.
He wrote a 2016 column for National Reviewtitled “The Federal Government Should Follow the Constitution and Sell Its Western Lands.” The following year, he wrote another National Review column calling for Trump to fire former Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke.
