CEI Congratulates David Bernhardt on Confirmation as Secretary of Interior

CEI Congratulates David Bernhardt on Confirmation as Secretary of Interior

Today, the U.S. Senate voted to confirm David Bernhardt as Secretary of the Interior. Bernhardt was confirmed by a vote of 56-41.

Director of CEI’s Center for Energy and Environment Myron Ebell said:

“We congratulate David Bernhardt on his bi-partisan confirmation by the Senate to be Secretary of the Department of Interior. David’s decades of experience working on the whole range of land issues make him extremely well-qualified to lead a huge agency charged with managing hundreds of millions of acres of federal land. As Deputy Secretary, he has played a key role in implementing the Trump energy agenda to increase coal, oil, and gas production on the federal estate. He has also led efforts to improve Endangered Species Act regulations that have done little to recover endangered wildlife, but have instead been used to impose land-use controls on private landowners across America.  

“There is much more to be done. Many of our federal lands are in increasingly poor environmental condition. Over many decades, active stewardship has been abandoned in favor of preservationist policies that lock people out and result in ecological decline and calamities, including catastrophic fires. We look forward to working with Secretary Bernhardt to improve federal land management policies.”

Read more:

• Free to Prosper: Private and Public Lands
• Supreme Court Ruling Puts Important Limits on Federal Authority under Endangered Species Act