Steve Pearce confirmed: What to watch for at BLM

Former Rep. Steve Pearce was confirmed as the next director of the Bureau of Land Management on May 18, 2026. The decisive vote came after months’ worth of scrutiny of Pearce’s record as a proponent of selling off and leasing as much public land as possible (and after a confirmation hearing in which he mostly dissembled and deferred decision-making power to practically everyone else in Washington, DC).  

So, what happens next? Below, please see our (decidedly non-exhaustive) list of the top issues we’re watching at BLM now that Pearce has taken the reins. 

In Pearce’s hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, he was repeatedly pressed—by both Republicans and Democrats—about his long track record of votes and statements in favor of selling or disposing lands managed by agencies like the BLM. He found ways to parry every question, including by claiming he and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum don't “visualize” large-scale public land sales (notably, without addressing whether they would support such sales). Pearce also downplayed the influence of a BLM director in disposing or selling lands. In fact, federal law allows BLM land disposals under discretionary standards, and Pearce will now be in prime position to exploit or expand those opportunities. We should not assume norms from the past will hold, and we must be on the look-out for Pearce to crank up the pace or scale of land disposals under existing authorities (PDF). 

One mechanism for getting rid of public lands that has been popular within the Interior Department lately: recordable disclaimers of interest, or RDIs. By issuing an RDI, Interior can disclaim the federal government’s ownership or interest in a tract of public land. These determinations are provided for in the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976. Notably, RDIs have been central to efforts by the state of Utah to claim title of BLM lands for rights of way. And they’re ramping up: In 2019, the Supreme Court decided in favor of an Alaskan moose hunter who sought to use a hovercraft over state-owned navigable waters, but within a National Park Service preserve where hovercrafts typically wouldn’t be permitted. The case helped open the floodgates for a slew of RDIs that administratively recognize land title in favor of states. There is serious concern that the RDI process could be used as a backdoor method of easing public land sell-off or transfer—all the more so under Pearce, who will be incentivized to explore less headline-grabbing ways of getting lands to change hands.  

Bluntly, fossil fuel producers are getting rich off our natural resources, and we’re not receiving very much in return. Recent analysis found that oil and gas royalty rate cuts will cost taxpayers nearly half a billion dollars in lost revenue in the years ahead (unsurprisingly, in Congress, Pearce voted to keep oil and gas subsidies high and suppress royalty rates). We could soon see more agency-led steps that push royalties in the wrong direction. For example, BLM is working to further “commingling,” a practice of combining oil or gas produced from leases on lands with different ownership or management statuses and measuring it at a single facility. Commingling could make it harder for the BLM to verify the amount of oil and gas produced, and worsen the royalty gap caused by companies under-reporting (or not reporting) their production. In the Pearce era, expect more moves that defer to special interests and increase the chances of taxpayers being shortchanged. 

Despite a recent thaw, the administration is still slow-pedaling (if not outright obstructing) renewable energy permitting on public lands. Even some of the rare moves to ease development of renewables bear scrutiny: A new BLM proposal to sell lands in western Arizona so they can be used for a solar project raises the specter of the agency simply selling off chunks of land rather than following an appropriate and rigorous energy siting regime. 

Asked about the renewables record in his confirmation hearing, Pearce stayed non-committal and said he would have to check with his new bosses. But the war with Iran and resultant energy price spikes have only underscored the need to break away from the volatile boom-and-bust fossil fuel paradigm as soon as possible. So, how about it: Will Pearce keep stumping for oil and gas and help the administration crush the clean and efficient competition, or will he encourage the BLM to see public lands as a launching pad for the renewable energy economy, including by embracing sensible siting and dismantling arbitrary permitting roadblocks?  

Though he tiptoed around it in his confirmation hearing, Pearce is famously an opponent of national monuments and the law used to designate them (the Antiquities Act). In Congress, he voted many times to make the Antiquities Act harder to use, and he even introduced a bill to prevent any president from establishing a national monument in his home state of New Mexico. 

The administration is widely understood to be pursuing measures that will reduce or remove protections for several monuments, as reflected by a leaked memo from last year; now that he's confirmed at BLM, Pearce will be in a prime position to aid in that exercise. Pearce will oversee monument management plans; make policy recommendations to Secretary Burgum and the president; and influence implementation, access, conservation priorities and resource use. All this at a time when Congress is working to overturn management plans for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument using the Congressional Review Act (see below).  

Nobody seems to know the status of the mysterious joint task force announced by the Department of the Interior and Department of Housing and Urban Development, ostensibly to dispose of “underutilized” public lands for housing, back in March 2025. The last solid information we have to go on is reporting from that month indicating they're focused on disposing BLM lands within 10 miles of any city or town containing more than 5,000 people (sound familiar? The framework echoes Sen. Mike Lee’s doomed budget reconciliation bid from last summer). It’s safe to say that if and when this task force starts getting down to business, Pearce will be a major part of the decision-making process.  

Early in 2025, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case filed by the state of Utah calling for the “disposal” of 18.5 million acres of BLM land. Utah hasn’t yet filed a new suit in a lower court, but there is good reason to believe they’re still pursuing the same goal. And despite the many flaws in Utah’s case, the backing of other Western states (including amicus briefs) suggests they might not be alone. If these cases bubble to the surface again, it’s possible Pearce could exert influence in how BLM responds—for example, by declining to defend the agency in court.  

This administration’s BLM also owns a major piece of the ongoing and legally dubious expansion of the Congressional Review Act to apply to public land actions. Congress recently passed a CRA resolution of disapproval to overturn mining protections in Minnesota’s Superior National Forest (notably, including the headwaters of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness). That action was enabled by Interior’s submission of the relevant public land order to Congress—an unprecedented instance of a federal agency coordinating with legislators to upend the previous administration’s settled land management decisions. Meanwhile, BLM is waiting in the wings to rewrite plans for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, should the Utah congressional delegation succeed in their attempt to overturn it by CRA resolution. Under Pearce’s guidance, will we see even more norm-shattering steps to push this radical legislative tool, circumventing normal oversight and popular will? 

The administration just noticed final rescission of the BLM Public Lands Rule (also known as the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule), stripping much-needed guidance for the BLM to follow the balanced management approach set for it by Congress in FLPMA nearly 50 years ago. The move culminates a rollback process launched by the administration in the spring of 2025. 

So, how will the nation’s largest land agency operate without guidance to fulfill its “multiple use and sustained yield” mandate? Expect Pearce to steer the newly rudderless agency ever harder toward an approach that prioritizes drilling and mining over all other uses (and, by ignoring FLPMA and case-law that interprets it, virtually guaranteeing more liability for the increasingly resource-strapped agency). 

Speaking of...under the second Trump administration, the country’s largest public land management agency has shrunk drastically—a process about which even some industry voices have expressed concern. A recent report from Inside Climate News showed BLM had shed 23% of its staff as of January 2026, with indications it has since lost thousands more. The administration’s budget proposal for fiscal 2027 calls for the agency to lose an additional 2,000 positions. 

Cuts like these undermine not only the effectiveness of the agency, but the very institution of public lands, as the prospect of increasingly mismanaged or unmanaged lands make privatization of those lands more palatable). Presumably, BLM Director Steve Pearce will have a major say on whether there are more agency shakeups and downsizings to come.