SEATTLE — Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump intends to with­draw the nom­i­na­tion of William Per­ry Pend­ley to head the Bureau of Land Man­age­ment, a senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial said Sat­ur­day — much to the relief of envi­ron­men­tal­ists who insist­ed the long­time advo­cate of sell­ing fed­er­al lands should not be over­see­ing them.

Pend­ley, a for­mer oil indus­try and prop­er­ty rights attor­ney from Wyoming, has been lead­ing the agency for more than a year under a series of tem­po­rary orders from Inte­ri­or Sec­re­tary David Bern­hardt. Democ­rats alleged the tem­po­rary orders were an attempt to skirt the nom­i­na­tion process, and Mon­tana Gov. Steve Bul­lock and con­ser­va­tion groups have filed law­suits to have Pend­ley removed from office.

Trump announced Pendley’s nom­i­na­tion to become the bureau’s direc­tor in June. A senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial, speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because they were not autho­rized to dis­cuss the mat­ter, con­firmed Sat­ur­day that the pres­i­dent intend­ed to with­draw that nomination.

“Good!” Bul­lock, a Demo­c­rat, tweet­ed Sat­ur­day. “William Per­ry Pend­ley wants to sell off our pub­lic lands – and has no busi­ness being in charge of them.”

The bureau over­sees near­ly a quar­ter-bil­lion pub­lic acres in the U.S. West and much of the nation’s onshore oil and gas development.

The White House did not offer an expla­na­tion for the deci­sion, which is not expect­ed to become offi­cial until the Sen­ate returns to ses­sion. The Inte­ri­or Depart­ment said in a state­ment that the pres­i­dent makes staffing deci­sions and that Pend­ley con­tin­ues lead­ing the agency as deputy direc­tor for pro­grams and policy.

Pend­ley, who in a 2017 essay argued that the “Found­ing Fathers intend­ed all lands owned by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to be sold,” spent three decades as pres­i­dent of the non­prof­it Moun­tain States Legal Foun­da­tion, which has worked on behalf of ranch­ers, oil and gas drillers, min­ers and oth­ers seek­ing to use pub­lic lands for com­mer­cial gain.

Among the cas­es Pend­ley worked on was one chal­leng­ing griz­zly bear pro­tec­tions on nation­al for­est land. In anoth­er, he sought to val­i­date an ener­gy developer’s claim to drill for oil on land con­sid­ered sacred by the Black­feet Indi­an Tribe near Glac­i­er Nation­al Park in Mon­tana. A fed­er­al appeals court reject­ed the effort two months ago.

The author of books that include “War on the West: Gov­ern­ment Tyran­ny on America’s Great Fron­tier,” he has crit­i­cized envi­ron­men­tal­ists as extrem­ists and expressed sup­port for Neva­da ranch­er Cliv­en Bundy, whose fam­i­ly has engaged in armed stand­offs with fed­er­al agents.

In his announce­ment of the nom­i­na­tion, Trump said Pend­ley had “worked to increase recre­ation­al oppor­tu­ni­ties on and access to our Nation’s pub­lic lands, height­en con­cern for the impact of wild hors­es and bur­ros on pub­lic lands, and increase aware­ness of the Bureau’s mul­ti­ple-use mission.”

The Inte­ri­or Depart­ment has dis­put­ed the notion that Pend­ley wants to sell off fed­er­al lands, say­ing the Bureau of Land Man­age­ment has acquired 25,000 acres under his leadership.

In his posi­tion at the agency, Pend­ley has over­seen the relo­ca­tion of most of the bureau’s jobs from Wash­ing­ton to var­i­ous loca­tions in the West, includ­ing its new head­quar­ters in Grand Junc­tion, Col­orado — a move con­ser­va­tion­ists con­sid­er an effort to weak­en the agency.

The agency has also sought to ease rules for oil and gas drilling that were adopt­ed under the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. One recent pro­pos­al, which would stream­line require­ments for mea­sur­ing and report­ing oil and gas pro­duced from fed­er­al land, is pro­ject­ed to save ener­gy com­pa­nies more than $130 mil­lion over the next decade.

“William Per­ry Pend­ley has been unfit to lead the Bureau of Land Man­age­ment every day since he was appoint­ed act­ing direc­tor in 2019,” Collin O’Mara, pres­i­dent and CEO of the Nation­al Wildlife Fed­er­a­tion, said in an emailed state­ment. “The fact that he was nom­i­nat­ed this June and not with­drawn until mil­lions of Amer­i­cans and elect­ed offi­cials spoke out illus­trates the wrong­head­ed pri­or­i­ties of this administration.”

Jen­nifer Rokala, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Cen­ter for West­ern Pri­or­i­ties, called for the Trump admin­is­tra­tion to remove Pend­ley from his position.

“With­draw­ing William Per­ry Pendley’s nom­i­na­tion con­firms he couldn’t even sur­vive a con­fir­ma­tion process run by the president’s allies in the Sen­ate. Keep­ing him on the job any­way shows the depth of dis­dain Sec­re­tary Bern­hardt and Pres­i­dent Trump have for the Con­sti­tu­tion,” Rako­la said. “The Bureau of Land Man­age­ment direc­tor is a Sen­ate-con­firmed posi­tion for a rea­son. Who­ev­er is in charge of one-tenth of all lands in Amer­i­ca must be approved by the Sen­ate, and these bald-faced attempts to evade the Senate’s advice-and-con­sent duties can­not stand.”