William Perry Pendley

Pendley was appointed to deputy director and then acting director of the Bureau of Land Management in 2019.[1] His role as acting director of BLM was controversial, given that Pendley had previously advocated for selling off federal lands.[15] He said he would not pursue mass land sales that he had previously campaigned for, because "the president has made it very clear that we do not believe in the wholesale transfer of federal lands".[16] He released a list of nearly five dozen former clients, including oil, mining and agriculture interests, that he would recuse himself from decisions on for a year or two.[17]

Opponents of Pendley's appointment included the Sierra Club; the Wilderness Society; Backcountry Hunters & Anglers; the CEO of the Patagonia clothing company; Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility; Sen. Martin Heinrich, Democrat of New Mexico; and Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.[18][19][20][21][14] His supporters included Sen. Steve Daines, Republican of Montana.[22]

In the Trump administration, Pendley oversaw the relocation of Bureau of Land Management jobs out of Washington, D.C., to Western states. Pendley said that he would prefer to relocate personally to Grand Junction, Colorado, but his own job was one of 61 identified as needing to be kept in Washington.[23] Congress rejected funding for the relocations, and Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, the Democratic chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, said that Congress would investigate whether the plan was appropriate.[24][19] In December 2019, Pendley wrote that nearly two-thirds of the 153 employees told to move out of Washington had agreed to relocate.[25] U.S. Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt officially established the bureau's headquarters as Grand Junction on August 11, 2020.[26] As of January 2021, 328 positions had been relocated; of them, 41 employees moved to Grand Junction, and 287 employees left the bureau instead of moving.[27]

Pendley said the biggest threat to U.S. public lands is wild horses and burros "causing havoc".[28]

On December 30, 2019, 91 groups with connections to public lands sent a letter to Secretary of the Interior Bernhardt demanding that Pendley resign or be removed from office for alleged conflict of interest. The Interior Department called the groups who signed the letter "environmental extremists."[29] The day afterward, Bernhardt acted to extend Pendley's tenure through April 2020.[4] Bernhardt repeatedly issued orders extending Pendley's tenure in an acting capacity, bypassing a Senate confirmation process. In May 2020, two activist groups, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Western Watersheds Project, sued over Bernhardt's ongoing appointments of Pendley to run the BLM and David Vela to lead the National Park Service. In June 2020, an unwritten order by Bernhardt extended Pendley's acting appointment indefinitely.[30] On June 26, 2020, Trump said he planned to nominate Pendley for confirmation by the Senate, a move that CNN said might give Pendley firmer legal footing to continue on an interim basis.[31] On August 15, 2020, administration officials said the nomination would be withdrawn.[32] Pendley continued leading BLM.[33] On September 8, 2020, the nomination was formally withdrawn.[34]

Pendley was ordered to leave his position by U.S. District Judge Brian Morris on September 25, 2020, after Governor Steve Bullock of Montana sued in federal court. The Interior Department said it would appeal the ruling,[5] and Pendley refused to resign,[6] suggesting that Judge Morris's ruling had "No impact, no impact whatsoever."[6] Pendley said in an October 2020 press conference that he couldn't be ousted because he was never officially named acting director, and that he acted instead as deputy director for policy and programs.[35]