Former Oil Lobbyist-Turned Interior Secretary to Ignore Judges Ruling on Sage-Grouse Rollbacks
Bernhardt continues to prioritize big oil and gas special interests despite pandemic and calls for invoking the 25th amendment.
WASHINGTON - Earlier this week, Trump’s Interior Department and Bureau of Land Management indicated that the administration’s final sage-grouse habitat rollbacks done at the behest of Big Oil and Gas special interests are complete — despite a district judge’s order to provide further analysis and justification for the moves based on the best available science. The rollbacks are set to ease protections in critical greater sage-grouse habitat on public lands across seven Western states for industrial oil and gas drilling and mining interests.
Conflicted Interior Secretary Bernhardt quickly began working with dispatch to roll back habitat protections shortly after being appointed by the Trump administration to be the agency's deputy secretary in 2017. Western Values Project previously exposed the oil industry and Bernhardt’s former clients’ close working relationships with Interior and the BLM that raised serious ethical and conflict of interest questions. Bernhardt and the BLM’s William Pendley have nearly 80 known industry related conflicts of interest between them. The duo is arguably the most conflicted land managing appointees in U.S. history.
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Western Values Project brings accountability to the national conversation about Western public lands and national parks conservation – a space too often dominated by industry lobbyists and their allies in government.