William Perry Pendley will be nominated to serve as director of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

Pendley, deputy director for policy and programs at the BLM, has served nearly a year as acting head of the agency. He was involved in a reorganization that moved the headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Grand Junction.

A White House news release announced the intention of President Donald Trump to nominate Pendley as director.

In a separate news release, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt praised the nomination for Pendley to lead an agency of the Department of the Interior.  “He’s doing a great job, including acquiring more than 25,000 acres of public land for expanded recreational access.”

Prior to joining the BLM, Pendley served nearly 30 years as president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a nonprofit law firm based in Lakewood.

He previously served as deputy assistant secretary for energy and minerals at the Department of Interior and authored the national minerals policy and exclusive economic zone proclamation for then President Ronald Reagan.

Pendley also served as a consultant to former Navy Secretary John Lehman and worked in a private legal practice in the Washington, D.C., area. He served as a lawyer to U.S. Sen. Clifford Hansen and to the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee.

Pendley holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from George Washington University and a law degree from the University of Wyoming. He served as a captain in the Marine Corps.

The BLM manages a total of more than 245 million acres of public lands located primarily in 12 western states. The agency also administers 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate throughout the United States.

For the 2018 fiscal year, activities authorized on BLM-managed lands generated $105 billion in economic output and supported 471,000 jobs.