Speaker 1: Uncle Sam owns a lot of land, who's managing all
Speaker 1: of it? This week on Parts Pervilion, we talk about
Speaker 1: the new head of the Bureau of Land Management, someone
Speaker 1: who believes the Bureau shouldn't actually be managing any lands.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to another episode of Parts Pervilion, the podcast
Speaker 1: from Bloomberg Environment. I'm your host, David Schultz, and I'm
Speaker 1: back from vacation, fired up and ready to go. Today
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about an interesting fellow named
Speaker 1: Bill Penley. He was just appointed as the acting chief
Speaker 1: of the Federal Bureau of Land Management, you know, the
Speaker 1: agency that manages one eighth the entire land mass of
Speaker 1: the United States. Unless you're really into federal lands issues,
Speaker 1: or you're one of Penley's eight hundred or so Twitter followers,
Speaker 1: you've probably never heard of him. But Bloomberg Environment's Bobby
Speaker 1: McGill says his appointment speaks volumes about where the Trump
Speaker 1: administration wants to take federal lands policy, and Bobby joins
Speaker 1: us in the studio today. Hello Bobby. Hello, So before
Speaker 1: we get into Penley, let's talk about the BLM itself,
Speaker 1: because you know, not everyone knows what that is. Myself
Speaker 1: included what exactly is the Bureau of Land Management and
Speaker 1: what does it do? So the Bureau of Land Management
Speaker 1: is the nation's largest land manager. They manage two hundred
Speaker 1: and forty six million acres of federal land, mostly in
Speaker 1: the West. And to give you an idea as to
Speaker 1: how significant their landholdings are, if you take a road
Speaker 1: trip through any of the eleven Western states, there's a
Speaker 1: pretty good chance that if you're outside of a major
Speaker 1: city's limits, something you see on the horizon is under
Speaker 1: BLM management. I have taken several of those road trips.
Speaker 1: That's something I've done personally myself. I can verify that.
Speaker 1: So the BLM manages all the federal onshore minerals. That
Speaker 1: means oil, gas, and coal. That means that even if
Speaker 1: it's not on federal lands, the BLM manages the oil.
Speaker 1: So the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, that's not BLM land,
Speaker 1: but it is. But the oil beneath it managed by
Speaker 1: the BLM. That's really important. So it's not just the
Speaker 1: land itself, it's what's under the land that's correct. And
Speaker 1: that leads us right into a great segue for Penley himself.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about him. He's the acting head of the
Speaker 1: Bureau of Land Management. He's quite a character. I looked
Speaker 1: at his Twitter feed recently. He has a black poodle
Speaker 1: named Mitcham who he posts a lot of photos of.
Speaker 1: He had a photo of himself recently on the fourth
Speaker 1: of July stand next to a big SUV with the
Speaker 1: American flag on it. He's you know, he basically it
Speaker 1: seems like he uses Twitter in a lot of the
Speaker 1: same ways that the President of the United States uses Twitter.
Speaker 1: He has been called flamboyant and Trumpian. For Trumpian, that's
Speaker 1: a great term. Who is he and where does he
Speaker 1: come from? What's his background and how did he get
Speaker 1: to where he is now. So William Perry Penley is
Speaker 1: the former president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation. He's
Speaker 1: originally from Wyoming. He is sort of a protege of
Speaker 1: former INTERI your Secretary James G. Watt, who was sort
Speaker 1: of the figurehead of the Sagebrush Rebellion, which was a
Speaker 1: response to basically the Carter Administration's management of federal lands
Speaker 1: in the West. And should and we should also say,
Speaker 1: for those of you who want to follow him on Twitter,
Speaker 1: his Twitter handle is sage Brush Rebel, so that he's
Speaker 1: he really identifies with that movement. Penley's a character because
Speaker 1: he is a protege of James Watt. James Watt is
Speaker 1: long has long been derided by the environmental movement for
Speaker 1: essentially wanting to dismantle a lot of the federal protections
Speaker 1: of federal land in the West and encourage certain kinds
Speaker 1: of development. So it sounds like he's someone whose viewpoint
Speaker 1: is that the federal government should be owning as little
Speaker 1: land as it needs, maybe no land, and it should
Speaker 1: all go back to the states and cities. That's kind
Speaker 1: of that was the main thrust of this movement, you know,
Speaker 1: this this so called sage Brush Rebellion. Penley has written
Speaker 1: very recently, actually in twenty seventeen in the National Journal
Speaker 1: that you know, the BLM should in the federal government
Speaker 1: should not be in the land management business. He advocated
Speaker 1: for the federal government to literally sell it all off.
Speaker 1: And I mean, you know, to be fair, the federal
Speaker 1: government owns a lot of land in the West. You know,
Speaker 1: the majority of land in Nevada and Utah is under
Speaker 1: federal control. This is sort of a sort of the
Speaker 1: inherent tension between those who think that there is a
Speaker 1: great national interest in a lot of this land for
Speaker 1: many different reasons. And those who believe that, you know,
Speaker 1: primarily the local local residents and local governments have the
Speaker 1: biggest stake in this land, right And I mean this
Speaker 1: is this is the context for all of this. You know,
Speaker 1: BLM can sometimes be, you know, sort of not an
Speaker 1: agency that doesn't grab a lot of headlines until you
Speaker 1: think about their role in a lot of the stuff
Speaker 1: that's been happening recently. And the main thing I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of is the Bunde standoff in Oregon. You know, that
Speaker 1: was all about who controls public land. And then we
Speaker 1: should remind our listeners who may have already forgotten that
Speaker 1: was a group of people, in a lot of them
Speaker 1: from the Bundi family who basically just commandeered a federal
Speaker 1: plot of land and refuse to leave and refuse to
Speaker 1: relinquish it. And it was a sort of a tense
Speaker 1: standoff for quite a while. That's that's the way people
Speaker 1: feel in that part of the country. And you know,
Speaker 1: we now have the head of of BLM, or at
Speaker 1: least the acting head. This doesn't seem like a pick
Speaker 1: that you make when you're trying to build consensus. You know, no,
Speaker 1: what is what does yeah, what does it say about
Speaker 1: this is this is not a consensus pick at all.
Speaker 1: This is Steve Bannon said that, you know the goal
Speaker 1: of the administration is to dismantle the administrative state, right,
Speaker 1: That's literally what they're trying to do. McK mulvaney just
Speaker 1: this last weekend said in South Carolina that if you
Speaker 1: want to drain the swamp, so to speak, the best
Speaker 1: way to do that is to get federal workers to quit,
Speaker 1: and the best way to do that is to move
Speaker 1: federal agencies out of Washington. The Interior Department announced the
Speaker 1: day after Penley started work at BLM on July sixteenth,
Speaker 1: that they will be moving the headquarters of the BLM
Speaker 1: to Grand Junction, Colorado. One'm from d C. From DC,
Speaker 1: one of the first federal agencies to move its headquarters
Speaker 1: out west. And so you know, Penley's hiring the move
Speaker 1: of the headquarters, and you know, these statements from the
Speaker 1: Trump administration, and according to my sources, they're saying that
Speaker 1: this these are these are steps you would take to
Speaker 1: you know, allow greater local control over federal lands. So overall,
Speaker 1: I mean to sort of put a bow on it.
Speaker 1: I guess it sounds like the Trump administration is, you know,
Speaker 1: we have these these really long simmary intentions in the
Speaker 1: West about the use of federal land to date back
Speaker 1: all the way to like the seventies and probably even
Speaker 1: before that. Things are really coming to a head in
Speaker 1: the last couple of years. You have the Bundy standoff
Speaker 1: and other people who are you know, advocating for the
Speaker 1: federal government to get out of the landlad And just
Speaker 1: to just to add to this, I mean, what's there's
Speaker 1: an important piece of this puzzle here is that in
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, the state of Utah actually passed a law
Speaker 1: that demanded the federal government hand over thirty one million
Speaker 1: acres within its within its boundaries. It's been unsuccessful, but
Speaker 1: it's it's part of this movement that has been gaining ground.
Speaker 1: But overall, it sounds like, you know, the Trump administration
Speaker 1: is not trying to sort of tamp things down and
Speaker 1: cooled off the rhetoric and you know, make you know,
Speaker 1: let's kind of all take a step back and take
Speaker 1: a deep breath. Quite the opposite, Quite the opposite. That's
Speaker 1: that's I find really interesting. That was Bloomberg Environment's Bobby McGill.
Speaker 1: You can find more of his reporting at our website
Speaker 1: news dot Bloomberg Environment dot com. That's news dot Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Environment dot com. If you want to chat with us
Speaker 1: on social media, use the hashtag parts per b. That hashtag,
Speaker 1: once again is parts per b. Today's episode of parts
Speaker 1: Pervillion was produced by myself along with Marissa Horne and
Speaker 1: Jessica Coombs. Nicholas Anzelada is our audio engineer. The music
Speaker 1: for this episode is a message by Jazaar. It was
Speaker 1: used under a Creative Commons license. Thanks for listening. Hey,
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