Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise is a project led by the Heritage Foundation that outlines policy goals for a second Trump term. William Perry Pendley is the author of Chapter 16: The Department of the Interior (DOI). Pendley was appointed to deputy director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in 2019 and later served in an unofficial capacity as acting director of the BLM for the remainder of the Trump administration. 

This post will consist of selected excerpts (numbered) from Chapter 16, followed by my comments (italicized).

1. DOI’s purview encompasses more than 500 million acres of federal lands, including national parks and national wildlife refuges; 700 million acres of sub-surface minerals; 1.7 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf; 23 percent of the nation’s energy; water in 17 western states; and trust responsibilities for 566 Indian tribes and Alaska Natives.

The DOI clearly has a broad mandate. My comments in this post will focus on Pendley’s opinions and policy recommendations bearing on environmental protection, conservation and endangered species.

2. Historically, DOI operated in a bipartisan manner consistent with the laws enacted by Congress pursuant to its powers under the Property Clause…That ended with the Administration of President Jimmy Carter, who, beholden to environmental groups that supported his election, adopted DOI policies consistent with their demands… 

The “Property Clause” refers to Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2 of the US Constitution: “The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.”  Per the Supreme Court, that power is subject to no limitations. 

Jimmy Carter was an environmentalist long before he ran for president. He rode a Democrat wave to the presidency and didn’t need the support of environmentalists to get elected. Nor did he need bipartisan support for his environmental agenda, because Democrats dominated both the Senate and House. So empowered, Carter pursued that agenda in earnest. For example…

In 1977, Carter vetoed a slew of water projects, mostly small dams and river diversion facilities, in dozens of congressional districts around the country. In 1978, he issued an executive order designating 56 million acres of Alaskan wilderness as a national monument. In 1980, he signed the Alaska Lands Act, which was the largest single expansion of protected lands in American history. And on December 2, 1980, “this now lame-duck president signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, creating more than 157 million acres of wilderness area, national wildlife refuges, and national parks — tripling the size of the nation’s Wilderness Preservation System and doubling the size of the National Park System. It was, and still is, the largest single expansion of protected lands in American history.”  (Unheralded Environmentalist: Jimmy Carter’s Green, by Kai Bird/Yale 360 Legacy 2023)

The American public has largely come around to Carter’s vision of protecting huge swaths of wilderness in the US. For example, by 2017, 70% of American voters opposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This included 84% of Democrats, 64% of Independents, and 52% of Republicans. (Leiserowitz et al, 2017). However, Trump was not among those Republicans, which brings us to…

3. DOI’s obligation [is] to develop the vast oil and gas and coal resources for which it is responsible.

On Trump’s last day in office, his administration “issued drilling leases on more than 400,000 acres (160,000 hectares) of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge” (Reuters, January 19, 2021) .

Then again, Trump did sign the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act. This 2020 Act has two major components: fully and permanently fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund at $900 million per year, and provide $9.5 billion over five years to address a maintenance backlog at American national parks. So maybe he cares at least a little about natural world? I doubt it.

The Trump administration had shown little interest in the natural world or endangered species before 2020 and had in fact “zeroed-out” conservation funding in its first three budget proposals. But 2020 was an election year and Republican senators at risk of losing their seats persuaded the administration to reverse course and sign the thing. Then, one week after the election, the administration implemented a rule which would give local authorities a veto over conservation-based land and water acquisitions and later proposed significantly fewer projects than the Act called for – significantly weakening the impact of the legislation. In other words, Trump only signed the Act for political gain and he sought to undermine its impact as soon as politically feasible.

4. The work of the Fish and Wildlife Service is the product of “species cartels” afflicted with group-think, confirmation bias, and a common desire to preserve the prestige, power, and appropriations of the agency that pays or employs them.

We get it: Pendley hates environmentalists.

5. A new Administration should…direct the Fish and Wildlife Service to end [the re-introduction of] so-called “experiment species” populations into areas that no longer qualify as habitat and lie outside the historic ranges of those species.

If suitable habitat within an endangered species’ historic range is unavailable, what’s wrong with introducing them to a restored habitat outside their historic range?

The Trump administration tried something similar in 2020, when it when it finalized a rule defining “habitat” to include only areas that are currently suited for listed species and directed the Fish and Wildlife Service to block setting aside any land that isn’t currently habitat but might be needed in the future (e.g., in case currently suitable habitat becomes unsuitable due to climate change). “It sounds kind of innocuous,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity, “But what this essentially says is if an area is degraded, if it can no longer support endangered species without restoration, then it couldn’t be protected.” (The Hill, 2023)

6. A new Administration should…abolish the Biological Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Per Encyclopedia.com: The Biological Resources Division (BRD) of the US Geological Survey “is the principal biological research and monitoring agency of the federal government. It is responsible for gathering, analyzing, and disseminating biological information in order to support sound management and stewardship of nation's biological and natural resources … Because it is independent of regulatory agencies—which are responsible for enforcing laws—the BRD has no formal regulatory, management, or enforcement roles. Therefore the BRD does not enforce laws such as the Endangered Species Act. Instead the BRD is responsible for gathering data that are scientifically sound and unbiased. The BRD also fosters public-private cooperation.”

I can only guess that Pendley wants to abolish the BRD because of its independence. A Trump administration would probably consider an independent agency part of the ”deep state” that must be eradicated.

7. A new Administration should Direct the Fish and Wildlife Service to design and implement an Endangered Species Act program that ensures independent decision-making by ending reliance on so-called species specialists who have obvious self-interest, ideological bias, and land-use agendas.

So, Pendley doesn’t want species specialists to be involved in the protection of endangered species. Put another way: he doesn’t want people who know a lot about a species to help the administration protect that species. He apparently believes that anyone’s who’s gone to the trouble to become knowledgeable about a species can’t be trusted to give good advice - that is, advice that gives cover for the administration to do whatever it want to do.

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References:

Congress Passed a Bipartisan Conservation Law. Then the Trump Administration Got in its Way. By Judy Fahys/ Inside Climate News, December 16, 2020.

Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E., Roser-Renouf, C., Rosenthal, S., Cutler, M., & Kotcher, J. (2017). Climate change in the American mind: October 2017. Yale University and George Mason University. New Haven, CT: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/americans-oppose-drilling-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge/

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise. Edited by Paul Dans and Steven Groves. Chapter 16: Department of the Interior by William Perry Pendley

Unheralded Environmentalist: Jimmy Carter’s Green Legacy. By Kai Bird/Yale Environment360, March 29, 2023. https://e360.yale.edu/features/jimmy-carter-environmental-legacy