Kathleen Sgamma is a longtime oil and gas industry advocate, often critical of the agency’s policies.

Longtime oil and gas industry advocate and vocal critic of federal oversight Kathleen Sgamma is President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, an agency that oversees some 18.4 million surface acres and 42.9 million acres of mineral estate in Wyoming.

With management authorities that affect agriculture, wildlife habitat, recreation, oil and gas development, commercial-scale renewable energy and the world’s largest coal producing region in the Powder River Basin, the federal agency plays a pivotal role in Wyoming’s economy.

Sgamma is president of the Denver, Colorado-based Western Energy Alliance, a powerful oil and gas trade group that advocates for the industry’s access to public lands — like those managed by the agency she’s now slated to run. The group is often at odds with federal agencies, particularly the BLM, over federal rules and regulations. Sgamma and the Western Energy Alliance are well known throughout the West, and her nomination has garnered cheers from fossil fuel industry leaders and jeers from many in conservation.

Gov. Mark Gordon described Trump’s nomination of Sgamma as “an excellent choice…to lead the Bureau of Land Management.

“As someone who has worked with Ms. Sgamma,” Gordon continued in a prepared statement, “I know she is well-qualified and knowledgeable when it comes to Wyoming, the West, and multiple use of public lands.”

Public lands advocacy group Center for Western Priorities, however, regards the nomination as “inappropriate” and “a direct threat to Western communities and wildlife that depend on healthy landscapes, clean air, and clean water.”

Sgamma “has consistently misrepresented the industry’s impact on public lands, always putting oil and gas companies’ interests above those of all Americans,” Center for Western Priorities Policy Director Rachael Hamby said in a prepared statement. “This appointment will hand the keys to our public lands over to oil and gas companies.”