HUFFPOST • June 26, 2020
President Donald Trump will formally nominate William Perry Pendley, a self-proclaimed “sagebrush rebel” with extreme anti-environmental views and a long history of advocating for the sale of federal lands in the West, to serve as director of the Bureau of Land Management. Pendley was tapped last July for a senior policy position at BLM, an agency of the Department of the Interior, and quickly elevated to acting chief. The backdoor appointment put him in charge of overseeing 245 million acres of public land — more than 10% of the entire U.S. landmass — and 700 million subsurface mineral acres. It also enraged environmentalists and sparked fears of a public lands sell-off.