This story was co-published with Public Domain.
President Donald Trump’s controversial pick to head the Bureau of Land Management, Steve Pearce, offered contradictory explanations about his record of pushing for federal land sell-offs at his nomination hearing Wednesday.
Pearce, a longtime former Republican congressman from New Mexico, has faced broad backlash from environmental, conservation and hunting groups for his record of working to undermine public land protections and pushing land sales as a way to reduce the federal deficit. Faced with a volley of questions from critical senators on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Pearce refused to disavow that record, instead emphasizing that he would have limited power to do so as head of BLM.
“I’m not so sure that I’ve changed,” Pearce said when pressed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) about his public land record.
“I do not believe that we’re going to go out and wholesale land from the federal government,” Pearce added, noting that “federal law says that we can’t do that from the BLM itself.”
Pearce spent the hearing reiterating some variation of that assurance. Asked about national monuments, Pearce said designating them is a job for the White House. Asked whether he supported selling major swaths of federal land, Pearce said that question was better directed to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
Several senators noted that they had heard repeatedly from constituents concerned about Pearce’s record of pushing to sell public land — including a widely circulated comment in a letter urging former House Speaker John Boehner to sell public lands to reduce the federal deficit that Pearce co-signed. The letter said that “over 90% of [federal public] land is located in the Western states and most of it we do not even need.”
“Idahoans do not want their public lands sold, period, full stop,” Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) told Pearce.
Selling federal public land remains unpopular in the West, where much of the nation’s holdings are concentrated. Some 76% of respondents opposed selling public land for housing, according to a Colorado College poll of Western state residents released earlier this month, and 74% opposed selling public land for oil, gas or mining development.
The lion’s share of the criticism on Wednesday came from Democratic members of the committee, although it was tempered compared to the backlash from public land advocates in recent weeks.
“[Pearce] called for the selling off of public lands,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) said in his opening statement. “That makes it challenging for me to view his potential tenure at the BLM as one of stewardship.”
“[Pearce] called for the selling off of public lands. That makes it challenging for me to view his potential tenure at the BLM as one of stewardship.”
Pearce faced surprisingly little questioning about anything else. No one pressed him about his ties to the fossil fuel industry or potential conflicts of interest.
As Public Domain previously reported, the former head of the New Mexico State Republican Party built his wealth in the oil-and-gas sector. He owns an oilfield services company called Trinity Industries, which he plans to turn control of over to his wife, as well as an interest in several oil leases in the Permian Basin, and sizable investments in fossil fuel and energy companies. If confirmed, he would have to divest many of those assets.
Pearce also took in more than $2 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas lobby when running for his congressional seat. As head of BLM, Pearce would oversee the agency’s oil and gas leasing.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Pearce extolled the value of public land access several times, noting that he grew up near chunks of Forest Service land where his family vacationed,and he recalled fond memories of spending time on federal public land outside Tucson, Arizona, with his granddaughter.
“When I got back from Vietnam I experienced the healing serenity of backpacking wilderness areas,” Pearce said.
Sen. Angus King (D-Maine) asked whether Pearce thought Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s directive requiring his personal sign off for renewable energy projects on public lands to move forward stood on firm legal ground, Pearce said he wasn’t familiar enough with the policy to weigh in.
“Based solely on his feigned ignorance of energy policy, Steve Pearce is unqualified to lead the Bureau of Land Management,” Aaron Weiss, the deputy director of the Colorado-based Center for Western Priorities wrote in a statement. “His ethics forms are woefully inadequate and leave room for massive conflicts of interest if he is confirmed.”
Pearce was not Trump’s first choice to lead the BLM, a job that is responsible for overseeing nearly 250 million acres of federal land. Kathleen Sgamma, a longtime oil and gas lobbyist, abruptly withdrew her nomination hours before her confirmation hearing in April after a watchdog group surfaced a private memo in which Sgamma condemned Trump’s role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Unlike Sgamma, Pearce has remained a steadfast supporter of Trump and defended him in the wake of Jan. 6 against assertions that he incited violence. In a now-deleted post to Twitter a few days after the rioting, Pearce wrote that Trump “will be our President FOREVER and no one can take that away from us.”
The committee adjourned the hearing without voting on Pearce’s nomination.
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