“House Democrats torched William Perry Pendley and his ongoing stint at the Bureau of Land Management helm yesterday, calling him a “bigot” and an “anti-Teddy Roosevelt” bent on marginalizing conservation of federal and tribal lands. Some of the sharpest criticism in the online roundtable came from Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.), who noted that Pendley has favored cutting protections for Native American cultural sites like Chaco Canyon in her home state, and supported President Trump’s 2017 decision to shrink the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah.
Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said he wants a new administration to focus on “BLM as a resource agency that’s tremendously underfunded and undervalued” and work to address “the personnel needs of BLM and strengthen the scientific decisionmaking processes.””
