BLM is adding acreage around here, not selling it off. Dont know what you are so fearful of.
www.blm.gov
I'm for multiple use of our BLM land. That includes grazing, mining, oil and gas extraction, timber harvesting, hunting, wilderness, ect. What are you looking for from a BLM director that meets your qualifications?
I'm glad you selected that one as the example to somehow support what Pendley is doing.
Let's not put our shoulders out of joint thanking Pendley and Pals for this Lower Blackfoot acquisition. He had nothing to do with it; zero, zilch, other than making sure the press release made it sound like he did something. He had as much to do with this as Al Gore had to do with inventing the internet. The DC powerstrokers are good at taking credit for things they had nothing to do with.
I think BHR knows how this deal came down. For those not nearby or not involved in these transactions, here is how this one happened.
TNC, The Nature Conservancy, bought these lands from Plum Creek over the years. We tried to get Congress to appropriate funds to buy those Plumb Creek lands, so TNC wouldn't have to. But, Pendley, when at Mountain States Legal Foundation, and his Pals at other entities, killed any chance of that with their backdoor lobbying and threats against those who were afraid of them.
Thankfully, TNC has/had the capital and clout to get it done. TNC acquired the lands and has held them ever since, offering to transfer much of them to the US Government if ever LWCF funding could complete a transaction.
This 5,500 acres was bought from TNC with the use of Land and Water Conservation Funds (LWCF). LWCF is a program Pendley has hated his entire career prior to becoming the lead vandal inside the BLM. He did nothing to coordinate this current LWCF funding appropriation that allowed this to happen, rather he and his fellow anti-public landers within the current Administration prefer to zero out money for LWCF.
The appropriation that made this possible happened because Senator Tester and Senator Daines of Montana sit on the Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee. When the House approved $535+ million, many in the Senate wanted to follow the President's idea to zero out the LWCF appropriations. The Senate appropriated $465 million (including funds for this MT project), in spite of the Administration, of which Pendley is one of the leaders for public land policy, wanting to zero it out.
Thanks to the House and Senate leaving some of that LWCF funding in the budget, the appropriations were available to make this transaction happen. The BLM did not buy it. The BLM was merely selected to be the holding agency for the land, the same as the other 25,000+ acres TNC has transferred to the BLM in this same general area.
Summary being - If Pendley and the Administration had their way, this would not have happened. There would have been no LWCF funds to make it happen. It happened because of TNC buying it back when Plumb Creek sold it and because the House and the Senate overruled the Administration's funding priorities. That is fact. Inconvenient facts not mentioned in the BLM press release linked above.
Here is commentary. Take it for what you want. The press release came from the BLM and is issued with approval by Pendley, as he is acting Deputy Director. He is going to make sure it makes him look like the hero, all the while he is serving as the conduit to his anti-public land friends to pressure the Administration and many Senators to zero out the programs like LWCF that make this happen. He needs all the veneer he can spin to try deflect what he is doing behind the scenes and what his intentions are. When a chance arises to take credit for something positive, he nearly breaks a leg getting to the podium to congratulate himself.
Most every land transaction the BLM has done, or will do, in the current fiscal year that ends September 30, will follow this exact pattern. I won't go through every transaction Pendley takes credit for, just know they all follow this same bullshit path of taking credit for doing nothing.
Don't expect any BLM press releases to give anything more that a high gloss finish to a story. Don't expect anything to come out of Department of Interior that is complete enough to put the pieces together as is stated above. Pendley and Pals won't let that happen. Warning to all - when Pendley and his ilk can take credit for something that looks good to the public, don't get between them and the mic, or you might get trampled.
I've been in this game for 25 years, as have many others. The new media spinners Pendley has brought to DOI/BLM can spit shine the bullshit all they want, but they won't convince me and most others that the current BLM leadership had anything to do with this excellent accomplishment. If they were serious about these kind of projects, Pendley and friends would not have been lobbying against the Blackfoot Clearwater Project and killing every version of that bill that came to a committee in Congress.
Pendley and his pals have made their living getting paid to peddle influence that is against the interest of public land hunters, any public land user for that matter. Now, through their connections with those holding the levers of power, they get to take credit for anything good and disguise the things they are doing at breakneck speed to cause lasting impairment to BLM lands and the agency as a whole.
For "Pendley and Pals" to take credit for anything such as this Lower Blackfoot, or any acquisition, is a joke. It is a kick in the crotch to TNC and the many locals who have spent years working on these projects. We all benefit from this project getting done.
Let's give credit to those who did the heavy lifting, not Pendley and Pals who are at DOI/BLM looting and vandalizing the agency while they can.
www.hunttalk.com
