The Trump administration has proposed selling 70 acres of an important wildlife conservation area adjacent to Californias San Bernardino National Forest to a limestone mining company after it dumped mineral waste materials on a portion of the federal land without permission.

The Bureau of Land Management is looking to sell the public lands to Omya Inc., a multinational corporation that operates a large limestone quarry in the Lucerne Valley. The land is part of a designated area that protects bighorn sheep and other wildlife.

In December 2005, the federal agency issued a notice of trespass after discovering that the quarry operation placed waste rock, known as overburden, on some 9 acres of federal land. The BLM says the planned sale would fulfill a settlement it reached with Omya in 2011 over the unauthorized use of the land, allowing the company to continue mining calcium carbonate in the area through 2055.

But conservationists view the proposal as the Trump administration rewarding a company for bad behavior. And the proposal raises obvious questions about the seriousness of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinkes repeated assurances that he would not pawn off federal lands.

We are seeing a troubling pattern developing: Ryan Zinke says one thing to the public and does another for special interests and corporations, Chris Saeger, executive director of the liberal environmental group Western Values Project, said in an email. When the Interior Secretary repeatedly states that he will not sell public lands, the American public expects him to keep his word.

This is at least the third time the BLM has eyed selling federal land under Zinkes watch. The former Montana congressman and Navy SEAL has painted himself as a fierce advocate of public lands, repeatedly saying that he opposes disposing of them, either by sale or transferring control to states.

In August, facing widespread public outrage, Interior scrapped a proposal to sell more than 1,600 acres that until recently were protected as part of Utahs Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The agency claimed in a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune that Zinke did not see the proposal before it went out and was not happy about it. Still on the table, however, is a BLM plan to unload 200 acres in Emery County, Utah , that power company PacifiCorp hopes to incorporate into its Hunter power plant.