In just nine months at the helm of the Interior Department, Secretary David Bernhardt has not only worked to reward his former lobbying clients; he’s also gone on a hiring spree of extremists who share his goal of helping industry benefactors at the expense of America’s lands and wildlife.

The latest example? William Perry Pendley, the anti-public lands lawyer who is now running the Bureau of Land Management. Pendley would like Coloradans to believe he’s changed his tune. He spent years calling for the disposal of America’s lands on both philosophical and legal grounds. But his clumsy attempt to “set straight” his decades-long record, through an op-ed in the Denver Post, instead reveals how far the Trump administration will go to undermine America’s bedrock conservation laws.

Pendley has long advocated for overturning the entire legal basis of federal land ownership. In a 2016 National Review column that openly called for the United States to “sell its western lands,” Pendley claimed that the Supreme Court “correctly” interpreted the Constitution’s property clause in 1845, then “made a mess” of that clause in a landmark 1976 case, Kleppe v. New Mexico. The Property Clause is straightforward — it says that Congress shall “make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States.”

Kleppe was a case about wild horses and burros, and in its ruling, the court made it clear that Congress, without limitation, has authority over America’s public lands. Pendley has tried, without much success, to chip away at Kleppe during his legal career. Make no mistake: if Kleppe was overturned, Pendley and his ilk would instantly demand that the U.S. hand almost all national public land over to states and private parties.

Indeed, that’s exactly what Pendley tried to do during his first stint inside Interior, when Interior Secretary James Watt suggested the nation sell 5% of America’s public lands. The proposal became the Reagan administration’s disastrous “Asset Management Program.” It was quietly killed in 1983, with Watt telling governors “the mistakes of 1982… are not being, and will not be, repeated.” One of Watt’s aides told The New York Times that selling public lands was “a political liability to President Reagan.”

Pendley knows that his revisionist history won’t hold up under scrutiny, so he’s also taken to claiming that his “fidelity” to President Donald Trump and Secretary Bernhardt means his past proposals don’t matter today.

But Pendley is the rule, not the exception, inside Trump’s Interior Department. Bernhardt has not only surrounded himself with longtime lobbyists who are determined to help their former and future industry employers; he’s also filled Interior with zealots who, like Pendley, have spent their careers undermining public lands and those who protect them.

Months before Pendley took over as acting BLM director, Bernhardt hired Karen Budd-Falen, another lawyer who built her career opposing public lands.

In addition to her work representing Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who denies the entire existence of the U.S. government, Budd-Falen supported a law in Utah that tried to force the Interior Department to hand over all national public lands to the state. She once wrote a land-use plan for a New Mexico county that called for the arrest of government employees if they violated the rights of historic users of public lands, and even tried to sue Bureau of Land Management employees in their personal capacity using anti-racketeering laws.

It’s clear that Bernhardt, the ultimate D.C. swamp creature and lobbyist, has found common cause with anti-government lawyers like Pendley and Budd-Falen. All three of them have spent years trying to undermine America’s bedrock conservation laws like the Endangered Species Act.

It was Pendley who wrote in 2012 that the ESA has “devastating consequences” for farmers in California, specifically citing the delta smelt, a small endangered fish threatened by low water levels. Then it was Bernhardt who reduced protections for that fish — a decision that appears to violate his ethics pledge and helped his former lobbying client, California’s powerful Westlands Water District.

In 2011, Budd-Falen told Congress that the ESA was nothing more than “a sword to tear down the American economy, drive up food, energy and housing costs and wear down and take out rural communities and counties.” She specifically criticized how Interior identified “critical habitat” areas for protections.

This year, Secretary Bernhardt delivered, proposing major changes to how Interior interprets and enforces the Endangered Species Act. He gave Budd-Falen what she wanted — drastically limiting future critical habitat designations. Those changes, if they survive the inevitable legal challenges, will make it far more likely that the demands of Budd-Falen’s former clients, including Cliven Bundy, will take precedence over endangered species in the future.

William Perry Pendley and Karen Budd-Falen may be the most visible signs that Bernhardt has opened the Interior Department doors to people who have spent decades undermining America’s public lands, but they’re hardly outliers. The ranks of political appointees at Interior are now filled with “nut jobs,” as one BLM employee put it. That’s exactly what Secretary Bernhardt wants — and it’s what makes him so dangerous.

Jennifer Rokala is the executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, which promotes responsible public lands policies across the Mountain West. She lives in Denver.

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