BLM nominee Steve Pearce is a threat to public lands

The Trump administration has nominated former Congressman Steve Pearce to lead the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), setting the stage for the nation’s largest public lands management agency to be run by a hardline politician whose record supports the outright sale and privatization of public lands. 

Pearce is a familiar face in New Mexico, where he served as the 2nd congressional district’s U.S. representative for nearly a decade. He ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 2008 and for governor in 2018, before leaving office to serve as the chair of the state’s Republican Party—a position he’s been criticized for mismanaging according to The Washington Post.

Over the course of his political career, Pearce has attracted intense criticism for positions and policies that are extremely unpopular with the American public:

• Pearce has publicly championed the sale of public lands. In 2005, he voted for a failed provision in a budget bill that would have allowed the sale of public lands well below market rate. He has expressed a desire to reverse the "trend" of public lands ownership and called for “divesting” the government of its “vast land holdings”. In 2016, he went so far as to cosponsor a bill that would hasten the sale or exchange of public lands.
• Pearce opposed the designation of Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks against the prevailing opinion of local communities called for its boundaries to be shrunk after designation. He took the extreme step of introducing (failed) legislation to bar any president from designating national monuments in New Mexico, and voted for numerous bills that would hamstring national monument designations.
• Pearce attempted to scrap provisional protections for potential wilderness areas in New Mexico and voted several times to undermine the protections of the Wilderness Act. He voted to open drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, build a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge and strip roadless protections for the Tongass National Forest.
• Pearce—the former owner of a multiple oilfield service and equipment rental companies—has consistently supported legislation that puts extractive corporations before the American people. He has voted against cutting subsidies for oil companies and against efforts to hold them accountable for disasters. He helped pass a 2013 bill that directed land managers to prioritize drilling above all other uses and fought against implementation of a BLM rule aimed at reducing natural gas waste.

Put simply, Steve Pearce’s positions pose an existential threat to public lands and his nomination suggests that the administration intends to continue with its destructive agenda. A confirmation vote for Pearce is a vote for the fringe movement privatize public lands that was resoundingly rejected by the public this past summer.

Pearce’s nomination has already drawn widespread opposition from across the public and private sector—his confirmation must be stopped or our shared public lands will be irreversibly harmed.