News for Immediate Release
Aug. 14, 2019
Contact: Katie McKalip, 406-240-9262, [email protected]
MISSOULA, Mont. – Backcountry Hunters & Anglers today responded to statements made by Sen. Steve Daines regarding the appointment of William Perry Pendley, an outspoken proponent of selling public lands and waters, as head of the Bureau of Land Management. Daines (R-MT), who has previously supported keeping public lands under public ownership, called concerns over Pendley’s appointment by the administration “overblown.”
BHA President and CEO Land Tawney offered the following reaction:
“Senator Daines is correct when he says that Mr. Pendley can’t sell public lands on his own; however, to say that he sees nothing wrong with the ascension of Mr. Pendley – a consistent, outspoken advocate of selling off our public estate – to the top post in the Bureau of Land Management is a slap in the face to all public landowners, especially those in Montana, who elected him to represent their interests and priorities.
“Our public lands belong to all of us and are valued by voters of political stripes,” continued Tawney, a fifth-generation Montanan. “To put Mr. Pendley in charge of an agency that he has made a career out of trying to dismantle is ludicrous. Montanans urge Sen. Daines to keep his promise and stand up for our publicly owned lands and waters.”
Until late last year Pendley was president of the conservative law firm Mountain States Legal Foundation. He has authored books titled Warriors for the West: Fighting Bureaucrats, Radical Groups, and Liberal Judges on America's Frontier; War on the West: Government Tyranny on America's Great Frontier and It Takes A Hero: The Grassroots Battle Against Environmental Oppression. In 2016 he wrote a National Review column calling on the federal government to sell Western public lands.
BHA members and supporters have sent more than 15,000 letters to Congress urging opposition to Pendley’s appointment.
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The Voice For Our Wild Public Lands, Waters & Wildlife.