It’s our money

As a mining engineer and geologist who’s worked on minerals projects in 25 states and 5 foreign countries, I was pleased this week to see President Trump finally intends to withdraw the nomination of William Pendley to head the Bureau of Land Management, BLM.

If you ever wanted to find more of a land grabber than Pendley, you’d have to search a very long time. Pendley is solely focused on stealing federal public lands and minerals away from U.S. citizens for private corporations. These are your lands and minerals managed (for multiple uses) by the U.S. Forest Service (191 million acres) and BLM (700 million acres).

Be clear in knowing that all of us own these income-producing resources. They are not natural resources owned by private ranchers and mining companies. “After collecting revenue from natural resource extraction, [from U.S. federal lands] the Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR) distributes that money to different agencies, funds, local [and state] governments for public use. This process is called disbursement. In 2019, ONRR disbursed a total of $11,693,266,132.”

As part of Pendley’s departure package, Congress should demand that Pendley pay back every dollar he wasted by moving BLM headquarters minerals staff to the west, where people wouldn’t notice what Pendley was doing. This is justified because his only purpose was to quietly promote his and his clients’ own private interests of stealing public resources.

Can you imagine the next crony Trump would nominate to lead BLM if re-elected in November?

Kelly Courtright

Deer Park