The Washington Post - 05.08.2019

A14 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, AUGUST 5 , 2019

BY STEVEN MUFSON

President Trump’s pick for
managing federal lands doesn’t
think the federal government
should have any.
This past week, Interior Secre-
tary David Bernhardt signed an
order making 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 President Ronald Rea-
gan’s administration.
The appointment comes at 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. Weeks ago,
Interior officials announced that
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 employ-
ees, including Pendley, would re-
main in Washington.
After more than 2^1 / 2 years in
office, Tr ump has yet to nominate
a permanent director for the
BLM. By placing Pendley in
charge of the agency, Bernhardt
has installed a longtime crusader
for curtailing the federal govern-
ment’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 spe-
cies such as the grizzly bear, and
pressed to radically reduce the
size of federal lands to make way
for development.
“The Founding Fathers intend-
ed all lands owned by the federal
government to be sold,” he wrote
in a National Review magazine
article in 2016. “Westerners know
that only getting title to much of
the land in the West will bring
real change,” he said.
His views differ sharply from
those articulated by former in-
terior secretary Ryan Zinke, who
said, “I am absolutely against
transfer or sale of public land.”
Asked whether Pendley’s ap-
pointment marks a change in
policy, an Interior Department
spokesman said Tuesday said
that “the administration ada-
mantly opposes the wholesale
sale or transfer of public lands.”

Pendley’s legal ties, as well as

his policy positions, have attract-

ed scrutiny. Environmental

groups are pressing Interior to

formally r ecuse Pendley from any

involvement in a court case in

which he is still the counsel of

record representing aging busi-

nessman Sidney Longwell and

his small company, Solenex.

Solenex leased 6,247 acres in

northwestern Montana in 1982

during the Reagan administra-

tion for about $1 an acre. Long-

well wants permission to build a

six-mile service road and bridge

over the Two Medicine River on

lands considered sacred by the

Blackfeet tribe. Interior wants to

cancel the lease. He would use

the road to bring in drilling rigs

and other oil exploration equip-

ment.

“The Department’s career eth-

ics professionals are working

closely with Mr. Pendley and will

advise him as necessary,” an In-

terior official said.

“Oil wells do not fit our tradi-

tional knowledge system of tak-

ing care of the land,” said John

Murray, the historic preservation

officer of the Blackfeet tribe. “A

lot of our origin stories are right

in that area.”

The exploration leases cover

an area of the Lewis and Clark

National Forest where the Badger

Creek and Two Medicine River

have their headwaters. The ex-

panse is surrounded by Glacier

National Park, the Bob Marshall

Wilderness area and the Black-

feet Indian reservation.

Administrations that succeed-

ed Reagan’s sought to block de-

velopment, arguing that the leas-

es were issued improperly in

violation of the National Envi-

ronmental Policy Act and the

National Historic Preservation

Act.

Obama officials proposed buy-

outs, and in November 2016,

Devon Energy took one. That left

just two leases: held by Solenex

and by oil driller W.A. Moncrief

Jr.

The Obama administration of-

fered to give Solenex enough

money to cover expenses to date,

while a private philanthropy of-

fered additional funding. The

Blackfeet tribe, which says the

current leases are in particularly

sensitive places, offered a swap

for 26 parcels of tribal land al-

ready producing oil. The tribe

said other parts of its reservation

do not have the same sensitivity.

Longwell and Pendley refused.

Murray called it all part of “a

big chess game.”

When Zinke — a Montana

native — took the helm of Interior

in 2017, he said he would keep

pressing for the cancellation of

the leases. But earlier this year,

the department said it would

drop efforts to cancel Moncrief’s

lease while still trying to termi-

nate the Solenex lease.

Pendley’s ties to the most con-

servative networks run deep.

Pendley’s Mountain States Legal

Foundation, founded in 1977 and

initially run by Reagan’s contro-

versial first interior secretary,

James G. Watt, has received back-

ing from ultraconservative

groups and individuals such as

the Koch-linked Donors Trust

and beer tycoon Joseph Coors.

Pendley will once again over-

see a coal leasing program he was

found to have mismanaged.

Pendley followed Watt into the

Reagan administration and was

cited in a 1984 report from the

Government Accountability Of-

fice, then the General Accounting

Office, on ethical missteps among

leaders of the federal coal leasing

program and an “incomplete and

unreliable” review by the agen-

cy’s inspector general.

The GAO report highlighted a

dinner that Pendley, then head of

the Minerals Management Serv-

ice, and another Interior official

and their wives attended with

two coal company attorneys on

March 19, 1982, the same day

Pendley and his colleague had

made a favorable decision re-

garding bids on Powder River

Basin coal leases. The coal com-

pany officials picked up the en-

tire $494.45 tab, or $1,343 in

today’s dollars.

Pendley, who had moved from

Interior to the Department of the

Navy, resigned the year after the

GAO’s findings became public.

“By fixing this pivotal deal in

1984 — and getting away with it

— Mr. Pendley may be one of the

most important faceless func-

tionaries in the expansion of coal

use in the United States,” said

To m Sanzillo, director of finance

at the Institute for Energy Eco-

nomics and Financial Analysis, in

an email. He said the report

showed “a much wider pattern of

high-ranking employees and ad-

ministration officials cutting

deals with the industry without

regard for laws.”

As a result, he said, “billions of

tons of coal could come to market

from the Powder River Basin for

the next now 40-plus years at

below market prices due to what

was done at the time.”

Since Pendley joined the

Mountain States Legal Founda-

tion in 1989, the group has repre-

sented a variety of clients in

political cases. One was racecar

driver Bobby Unser, who was

fined $75 for straying into federal

lands on a snowmobile. Unser

said he and a friend got lost in a

blizzard.

The group also joined an amic-

us brief on limiting the use of

union dues in political cam-

paigns if individual members

don’t approve.

In 2007, the foundation, repre-

sented by Pendley himself, filed a

suit seeking to narrow protec-

tions for grizzly bears on national

forest lands. It s ought to reverse a

U.S. Forest Service ruling that

barred motorized access to park

land to protect grizzly bears un-

der the Endangered Species Act.

The filing called the ruling “arbi-

trary, capricious, an abuse of

discretion.”

Pendley, who wrote a book on

Reagan’s legacy called “Sage-

brush Rebel,” has become a pun-

dit on the conservative circuit.

His other books include “War-

riors for the West: Fighting Bu-

reaucrats, Radical Groups, and

Liberal Judges on America’s

Frontier” and “War on the West:

Government Ty ranny on Ameri-

ca’s Great Frontier.”

During an appearance at the

2014 Conservative Political Ac-

tion Conference, Pendley said

that “you can’t understand the

battle against fossil fuels without

understanding what is at t he core

of the environmental movement

and the environmental extrem-

ists.... They don’t believe in

human beings.”

Pendley also expressed sympa-

thy for Cliven Bundy, who ended

up in a heavily armed standoff

over whether he could graze his

cattle on federal land in violation

of federal conservation efforts.

More recently, in a September

2017 article in the National Re-

view magazine, Pendley attacked

then-Interior Secretary Zinke for

failing to do enough to reduce the

size of the country’s national

monuments. Zinke, while ap-

proving reductions in the size of

four national monuments, fa-

vored the protection of the Bad-

ger-Two area Solenex wanted to

explore.

“Secretary Zinke recommend-

ed decreasing the size of only four

of the most blatantly illegal na-

tional monuments while leaving

the boundaries of all the others

standing with mollycoddle lan-

guage, which will soon get strick-

en by environmentalists,” Pend-

ley wrote. He urged Trump to

“heed his own pugnacious and

not Zinke’s pusillanimous coun-

sel.”

[email protected]

Juliet Eilperin contributed to this

report.

Tr ump pick to manage federal land opposes the concept

MATTHEW BROWN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Emigrant Peak is seen near the Yellowstone River in Montana. William Perry Pendley has been

appointed acting director of the Bureau of Land Management, which manages federal land.

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