With the nation’s attention understandably diverted by the rising COVID-19 death toll and the scandal-a-day Trump administration, U.S. Senate Democrats penned a strong letter this past week opposing the nomination of William Perry Pendley as director of the Bureau of Land Management.

Mired in the minority during a coronavirus pandemic and economic recession, those lawmakers must have felt like they were whistling in the wind with high noon approaching. Just about the last thing most people are focused on is the future of our federal public lands, which is precisely the way certain desperados like it.

Pendley’s extractive industry allies were surely grinning at the prospects of having their own standard bearer behind the big desk at BLM with close access to an endless river of land deals and lucrative leases, one with the ability to enforce or ignore existing laws, one whose loyalty to the cause of stripping the West like a stolen car would never be in doubt.

But the senators’ letter struck a chord. Whether it was a groundswell of broad-based support for Pendley’s ouster, or the reality that the foundering Trump administration doesn’t need one more fight these days, the message got through.

The Trump administration confirmed Saturday it was withdrawing Pendley’s nomination. We may eventually learn what precisely led to the decision, but we do know it wasn’t a fit of conscience or a sudden epiphany about the nominee.

Pendley is a hired gun who makes no secret of his belief that public lands exist to churn a bundle for big mining, oil and gas giants, and corporate ranchers that make the cattle barons of the Old West look like Franciscans on burros. Pendley makes his mentor James Watt seem like an almost reasonable guy, and that makes him a hero to the rubes who believe the Sagebrush Rebellion was about family ranchers.

Instead of waiting to be cut short at a confirmation hearing, the entire Senate Democratic caucus signed on to the letter led by Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico and Energy and Natural Resources Committee member Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia registering strong opposition to Pendley’s nomination. Nevada Senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen followed with blistering comments. The letter was a warning shot with a serious intent. The nominee was in for a serious challenge.

The letter read in part, "Mr. Pendley’s public record, including his advocacy for reducing public lands and access to them, routine attempts to undermine tribes, and climate change denial makes him unfit for the position. The Bureau of Land Management is responsible for stewarding vast expanses of public lands. It needs a leader who reflects the values of the American people and their support for access to public lands. Mr. Pendley’s record lays bare his decades of opposition to those values."

In that regard acting BLM director Pendley is a quintessential Trump administration nominee. The attorney was the longtime president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which calls itself a “conservative counterweight to environmental groups’ litigation efforts.” To hear the folks at Mountain States tell it, they’re all about the constitution, private property rights, and economic liberty. As an organization, it deftly uses the West’s mythic spirit of independence to the benefit of some of its biggest backers such as Shell Oil and Koch Industries.

Pendley’s previous stint in the federal bureaucracy in the early 1980s at Watt’s Department of Interior was a rocky one. He became embroiled in a scandalous 32,000-acre coal lease selloff in the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming. He was eventually dismissed and later fell short in a confirmation hearing.

Since then the lawyer has made no secret of his opinions, legal and otherwise, on a litany of public lands issues. From revoking monument designations and shredding the Antiquities Act of 1906 to plucking the sage grouse as a protected species, he hasn’t met a federal land and environmental protection he’s liked.

Pendley sniffs at the constitutionality of federal ownership of public lands and wants to see federal public lands transferred to the state, if only as a pass through to private ownership. As Western Values Project (WVP) Executive Director Chris Seager put it prior to the withdrawal, “Anything they’ve ever said about not selling off public lands has just been a political smokescreen to distract from their real intentions: handing over public lands to their special interest allies.”

Tribal governments weren’t among those special interests. Pendley has been lambasted for showing racism toward Native American people and has questioned their sovereignty.

Nor could outdoor enthusiasts who cherish their access to fishing, hunting and camping areas under federal management consider him on their side. In Montana, he litigated unsuccessfully to block public access to rivers and streams.

As Citizens for Responsibility in Washington (CREW) noted, Pendley’s list of potential conflicts of interest is 17 pages long.  As Heinrich said prior to cheering the withdrawal announcement, putting Pendley in charge of the BLM would be like putting an arsonist in charge of the fire department. I’m guessing we’ll soon learn more about Pendley’s many conflicts.

If you think the best use of a forest is to fill the Home Depot lumber aisle, and that distant mountainside is just an open-pit mine or hydraulically fracked oil and gas field waiting to be skinned, then Pendley was your kind of guy. If you think, as the Watt acolytes do, that God created nature as man’s all-you-can-eat buffet, then Pendley’s withdrawal probably brings a tear to your eye.

The rest of us appreciate the crisis that’s just been avoided. It has been Trump’s plan from the start to turn the federally managed public lands of the West into a giant yard sale with special discounts for special interests.

These are trying times, tragic and challenging in so many ways, but word of the withdrawal of the hired gun Pendley’s nomination should provide at least a little comfort for those who love the West and our federal public lands. Not just the environmentalists, but the hunters and anglers and family ranchers, too.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in Time, Readers Digest, The Daily Beast, Reuters, Ruralite and Desert Companion, among others. He also offers weekly commentary on Nevada Public Radio station KNPR. His newest book—a biography of iconic Nevada civil rights and political leader, Joe Neal— “Westside Slugger: Joe Neal’s Lifelong Fight for Social Justice” is published by University of Nevada Press and is available at Amazon.com. Contact him at [email protected]. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith