Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, a former BLM employee, said Wednesday that he has not actively pursued the position, which opened up when former state BLM director Sally Wisely left in October to take a similar job in Colorado. But he is apparently in the mix for the post, and says he would consider taking the job if it is offered - though he also has his doubts.

"I've had some people approach me about the position," Noel said by phone as he traveled from Salt Lake City to Kanab on Wednesday. "There are people who have asked me to consider it. But I'm not sure where it is in the process at this point."

If offered the job, he added: "I'll take a look at it. There are people who think I could do a lot of good. But having been in the bureaucracy, I know that sometimes there's not a lot you can do. Sometimes you can be more effective on the outside."

State BLM officials declined comment Wednesday on what they call a personnel matter.

A spokesman for Utah Rep. Chris Cannon said the Republican has had discussions with the BLM about the vacant director's position in which Noel's name was mentioned along with Gayle McKeachnie, rural affairs adviser to Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.

"Those have been part of the conversation in the broad mix," said Cody Stewart, executive director of the House Western Caucus, which is chaired by Cannon. "Other names have been mentioned."

Noel worked for the BLM in a variety of positions for more than two decades before leaving the agency in the late 1990s. But he is best known for his often withering criticism of the BLM and Interior Department over how they manage public lands, both in his native Kane County and the state overall.

Noel acknowledges he left the BLM at least in part because of the Clinton administration's creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996. At the time, he was the BLM's manager for an environmental impact study of the proposed Andalex Coal project on the Kaiparowits Plateau. The project was scuttled by the monument designation.

He has since publicly clashed with the agency over its grazing and water decisions - Noel is currently the executive director of the Kane County Water Improvement District - and has been a vocal supporter of the county in its ongoing dispute with the BLM over road signs the county has posted on federal land in and around the monument.

Noel raised hackles in the environmental community and beyond last summer when he told a Utah Farm Bureau gathering that the county's defiance of the BLM was the "Shot heard round the world."

He added, "We are literally in the fight of our lives with the federal government. We have the federal government believing they are the supreme power."

He also has not shied away from taking on conservation groups.

"There's an entity out there that doesn't want any use of public land," he told the Farm Bureau audience. "I call that rural cleansing."

Environmentalists, needless to say, are not thrilled to hear Noel may be in the running for the state's top BLM job.

"Mike Noel has made it his life's work to attack and even eradicate the BLM's basic mission - to protect and manage the nation's public lands. He doesn't even think the BLM should own and manage these lands," said Heidi McIntosh, conservation director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. "It's really a kick in the shins to most moderate Americans who believe in balanced approach, which includes preservation."

Noel says he's not anti-BLM. But he does not hesitate to express his disdain for the way the agency was managed under Clinton and former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

"They did not follow the law. They did not follow the Federal Land Policy and Management Act," he said. "They somehow forgot about it."

Noel says he is philosophically aligned with Interior Secretary Gale Norton and national BLM Director Kathleen Clarke, the former director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources. But he also knows he would be a controversial hire, given his own philosophy and past statements.

In that sense, he said, "I don't know if I'd be a good fit. When you go into an organization, you want the support of the people in that organization, and a lot of them probably wouldn't feel like they could support me. Which would make it difficult."

jbaird@sltrib.com