More than 125 public land, climate and environmental advocacy groups signed on to a letter Monday urging senators to oppose President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the federal government’s largest land management agency, citing “inherent conflicts of interest.”
In February, Trump tapped Kathleen Sgamma, a longtime leader of Western Energy Alliance, an oil and gas trade association, to serve as director of the Bureau of Land Management, an agency that manages 246 million acres of public land and oversees onshore oil and gas activity.
“A nominee with a conflict of interest, specifically one with ties to the oil and gas industry, cannot and will not be able to maintain a commitment to the broader agency mission,” the Conservation Lands Foundation, the Western Environmental Law Center, Earthjustice, Patagonia and dozens of other groups wrote in the letter.Subscribe
“In choosing Kathleen Sgamma as the nominee to lead the BLM, the Trump administration is sending a clear and unambiguous message that BLM lands will be used for the benefit of the fossil fuel industry, not local communities,” the letter reads. Under Sgamma’s leadership, BLM would be “focused on selling off land to the highest bidder rather than conserving America’s priceless public lands for the benefit of future generations.”
A spokesperson for the Western Energy Alliance said the organization declined to comment at this time.
Oppose Kathleen Sgamma Blm Director | 78.2KB ∙ PDF file | Download
The letter comes ahead of Sgamma’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on Thursday. The Conservation Lands Foundation spearheaded the letter and shared it with Public Domain shortly after sending it to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), chair of the committee, and Sen. Martin Heinrich (N.M.), the committee’s ranking Democrat.
Western Energy Alliance, where Sgamma has served in a leadership role since 2006, has a long history of fighting environmental regulations and suing the very agency Sgamma has been nominated to lead, as Public Domain previously reported. She has also voiced frustration with federal land ownership in the West, going as far as to blame federal land management “abuses” for armed right-wing militants taking over Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016.
In an ethics agreement that Sgamma signed late last month, she agreed to resign from Western Energy Alliance upon being confirmed to the helm of BLM and to take steps to avoid conflicts of interest, including obtaining written authorization to participate in matters before the agency that involve WEA and the oil and gas companies it represents. But tracking potential conflicts could prove difficult.
WEA hasn’t listed its members publicly for years, said Aaron Weiss, the deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, a Colorado-based conservation group.
“Senators shouldn’t be holding a hearing, much less a vote, without knowing who’s been paying her salary for the last decade,” he told Public Domain. “Don’t know if anyone will ask for it, but they should.”
Public Domain will cover the Sgamma’s confirmation hearing, which is scheduled for Thursday morning.
