Tim Whitehouse

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Law enforcement rangers working for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management — working at much-beloved places like Basin and Range National Monument — have very tough jobs. They are responsible for patrolling one of every 10 acres in the U.S. Each one of the roughly 200 rangers is now tasked with patrolling an area approaching the size of Delaware while safeguarding some 35,000 recreational visitors each year.

Making this job even harder is the stance toward federal law enforcement embraced by BLM acting director William Perry Pendley, who was recently reappointed to his role as acting director of the agency through April 3. In a highly unusual newspaper op-ed to the Las Vegas Review-Journal penned by Pendley late last year, Pendley said BLM law enforcement Rangers should defer to local sheriffs regarding violations of federal law— even on BLM land.

Pendley’s contention that “local law enforcement bears primary responsibility for enforcing state and federal law” is not rooted, as far as federal law goes, in any statute and flies in the face of more than a century of constitutional law on federal supremacy. Moreover, federal rules and regulations are exactly what BLM’s rangers are specially trained and tasked to enforce. Ceding away their enforcement primacy without a clear act of Congress is wholly indefensible.

Pendley’s radical position also threatens to aggravate flashpoints leading to needless and potentially violent confrontations. For example, BLM management plans may call for road closures to protect vulnerable resources like archaeological sites and critical habitat for endangered species. As we have seen in some Western counties, local officials, including sheriffs, may oppose these closures. Pendley’s pronouncement emboldens sheriffs to push back against BLM personnel charged with enforcing these road closures.

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This concern is not abstract. Experiences with the renegade rancher Cliven Bundy in Nevada and the seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon illustrate how dangerous conflicts over federal land management can become. Virtually every Western state has experienced some bad incidents already.

For BLM rangers, this is flat-out dangerous. A recent study published in the peer-reviewed journal Political Behavior looked at so-called “constitutionalist” sheriffs who claim federal authority is subordinate to them. Its analysis found: “Counties with constitutionalist sheriffs are 50% more likely to have violence against BLM employees than other counties, even when controlling for other factors.” The study concluded these sheriffs may “increase political violence against the federal government by stoking citizens’ anti-federal grievances and by making it difficult for the BLM employees to enforce land regulations.”

Compounding these safety issues are BLM staff’s perception of threats. In 2016, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility conducted a survey among BLM staff in nine Western states and nearly half of respondents reported “threats to our safety due to resource management issues.” Significant percentages of staff also do not “feel safe when I am in the field.”

For local sheriffs emboldened by Pendley’s prescription, it is not lost on them that for the past 30 years, the current acting director of the Bureau of Land Management has been a self-described “Sagebrush Rebel” litigating against the BLM. He was, for example, the lead lawyer for three Utah counties — San Juan, Kane and Garfield — currently battling environmental groups in the lawsuit over President Trump’s order that reduced the size of the Bears’ Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante BLM National Monuments to enhance extractive use of, and road access through, these lands.

While Pendley contends his past is irrelevant to his current job, he certainly brings a lot of baggage to it. The clear message he is sending to BLM rangers is that, should push come to shove, he will not have their backs.

All BLM employees, and especially its law enforcement rangers, deserve a real director who believes in the agency mission. Unfortunately, that is not the case now.

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Tim Whitehouse is the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a national alliance of federal, state and local resource professionals.