Donald Trump has appointed a longtime representative of the oil and gas industry to oversee the agency that manages 4 billion acres of public lands concentrated in the Western states.
Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, Colorado-based petroleum industry and trade group, has been appointed Director of Land Management. A graduate of MIT, Sgamma is a leading voice in the fossil fuel industry and calls for reduced drilling restrictions on public lands that produce around 10% of US oil and gas.
If confirmed by the Senate, she is a key architect on Trump's “drills, babies, drills” agenda, and a newly formed national energy that says Trump will establish “energy domination” around the world. He is alongside Interior Secretary Doug Burgham, who leads the council. . Trump has vowed to boost the drilling of US oil and gas and move away from Joe Biden's focus on the climate crisis.
Former Interior Secretary David Bernhard moved the Land Bureau headquarters to Colorado during Trump's first term, leading to a surge in employee resignations. The station went under Trump for four years without any supervision confirmed.
The 10,000-person agency headquarters returned to Washington, D.C. under Biden, who set up Montana Conservationist Tracy Stone Manning at the department to produce oil and gas in the name of fighting the climate crisis. He led the administration's efforts to restrain it.
SGAMMA is charged with reversed those policies by implementing a series of orders issued last week by Bulgham as part of Trump's plan to rapidly expand fossil fuel production.
Burgum includes a focus on reducing oil and gas lease sales, ending coal leases in the country's largest coal field, conservation and drilling, and renewable energy restrictions to protect a wide range of ranges. , ordered many reviews of Stone-Manning's signature efforts. Greater sage grouse, a western bird. Bulgham also ordered federal officials to review and redraw the boundaries of national monuments created under Biden and other presidents to protect unique landscapes and cultural resources.
Sgamma said she was honored to be nominated on social media.
She said she respects the agency's work to balance multiple uses of public land with land management, including energy, recreation, grazing and mining. “We look forward to leading an agency that is key to the agenda that unleashes American energy while protecting the environment,” she wrote on LinkedIn.
However, environmentalists warned that SGAMMA would increase profits for businesses over protecting public lands. “Kathleen Sugamma will be an unmitigated disaster for our public lands,” said Taylor McKinnon of the Biodiversity Center, who said that Sugamma will be “environmental law, endangered species, recreational or “It has a breathtaking sloppy thing beyond the profits of the industry.”
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon said Sugamma's nomination was a “great choice.”
Gordon, a Republican, said: “I know she is positive and knowledgeable when it comes to multiple uses of Wyoming, the West, and public land.”
Trump nominated Brian Nesvik to lead the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Until last year, Nesvik led the Wyoming match and fish division, pushing for the removal of federal protections for the Grizzly Bears. It will open the door to public hunting for the first time in decades after animals bounced back from their near-century appearances in the Rocky Mountains of northern America.
In its final days, the Biden administration expanded over 2,000 grizzly bears in Yellowstone and Glacier National Park.
