President-elect Joe Biden's transition team is searching for a long-term career official to lead the Bureau of Land Management on an acting basis through the first six months or more of next year. And it appears to be targeting Steve Ellis, who served as BLM's deputy director of operations until retiring after more than three decades with the bureau and the Forest Service in the final months of the Obama administration, according to sources. Biden's transition team has said publicly that the new administration plans to make some major changes at BLM, beginning the day Biden is inaugurated Jan. 20. Those changes are expected to include moving the bureau's senior leadership from BLM's new headquarters in Grand Junction, Colo., back to Washington. Sources say that will require a seasoned career official who understands the basic organization and structure of the bureau, and who has the respect of the staff — including those forced to leave the bureau when BLM moved to Colorado. They also want to allow the new Interior secretary time to decide on a permanent BLM director whom Biden would nominate for Senate confirmation. The Biden transition team is working on a list of potential nominees for a permanent director of the bureau, which oversees roughly 245 million acres of federal lands.
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