“Steve Pearce has a devastating track record of waging war on the very things that the Bureau of Land Management is tasked, in the heart of it mission, to protect. […] Steve Pearce is deeply out of touch with the people of New Mexico and the Western states and their fierce love of public lands.” - Demis Foster, Executive Director Conservation Voters New Mexico
This morning, Wednesday, February 25, 2026, Stevan “Steve” Pearce testified—under oath—before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee during a confirmation hearing for his nomination as director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
A former U.S. Representative from New Mexico, Pearce is well-known for his anti-conservation and anti-public lands opinions. The BLM happens to be the largest federal public land management agency in the country, responsible for managing 245 million acres—or 10% of the entire land mass of the United States.
As outlined by The Wilderness Society, Pearce has a long track record advocating for the sale and privatization of public lands and waters. Among his previous statements and actions are the following:
In 2005, while serving in Congress, he voted for a budget bill provision that would have facilitated the sale of million of acres of federal lands at below-market prices. Fortunately, that provision ultimately failed.
In 2012, Pearce criticized Theodore Roosevelt’s “big ideas of big forests and big national parks” and indicated his desire to “reverse this trend of public ownership of lands.”
In 2013, he helped pass a bill that required federal land managers to prioritize oil and gas drilling over all other uses on public lands.
Also in 2013, he introduced a bill that would prohibit any future president from establishing national monuments in New Mexico, a bill that eventually went nowhere. Pearce, however, continued to vote for several other bills that, at the very least, would have made it harder to designate national monuments.
In 2016, Pearce co-sponsored a bill that would have resulted in the sale of huge tracts of public lands and waters in the American West.
For the record, this is just a sampling of Pearce’s anti-public lands history. He’s also a close friend of the oil, gas, and grazing industries.
Today, during his Senate nomination hearing, he had an opportunity to clarify whether or not he’d changed his mind on these things—especially on the issue of potential sales or privatization of public lands.
All I can say is that, despite being given numerous chances to do so by several of the Committee’s members, he did not seize that opportunity. It’s unlikely he was able to remove much doubt from the minds of the countless hunting, fishing, conservation, recreation, and environmental organizations—and their many millions of members—that oppose his nomination.
In fact, his answers were mostly deflections.
The best example of this would be when Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR)—referring to Pearce’s previous statement that “most of that [public land in Western states] we do not even need”—asked him “is there too much public land in the West now in your view?”
Pearce’s response was that his statement came mostly out of “frustrations” with federal management of lands in certain states.
“But do you continue to hold that view or have you changed your mind?” Senator Wyden pressed him further.
“I’m not so sure that I’ve changed,” Pearce answered, adding that “I do not believe that we’re going to go out and wholesale land from the federal government […] and federal law says that we can’t do that with the BLM itself.”
And that is correct. The BLM does not currently have the authority to sell large tracts of public lands without congressional authorization.
What Pearce, as director of the BLM, would have, however, is the legal freedom to (try to) sell as many smaller parcels of up to 2,500 acres as he wants—which could add up very, very quickly.
That authority to sell small-size parcels of public land is granted under the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) of 1976, which established “the agency’s multiple-use and sustained yield mandate to serve present and future generations.”
After the exchange between Pearce and Wyden, Committee chairman Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) felt the need to clarify that “current federal law doesn’t allow the mass sale of federal public land.”
Mike Lee called the question “moot,” which is quite rich coming from a guy who actually tried to get a bill passed that would have allowed the BLM and Forest Service to sell millions of acres of public land last summer.
Next up was Senator James Risch (R-ID), who, I thought, actually had the most powerful Republican rebuke of Pearce’s (previous) intentions to get rid of federal public lands.
“There is no authority for you—for that matter, for the President—to sell off public land,” he said. “This is a 98% issue in Idaho. In all my decades of serving the state, I have never received such passionate and unified messages as I have on this particular topic.”
“Idahoans do not want their public lands sold. Period. Full stop,” Senator Risch emphasized. “Public lands are really a part of us and are really sacred to us, so any hint that that could happen really raises the ire of Idaho people.”
“I hope that you understand that the job you’re being appointed to requires the management of these public lands […] but as far as the wholesale sell-off, you have nothing to do about that. No matter what you thought about that, there’d be no way you could get that done without the concurrence of the United States Congress, which I can tell you is extremely unlikely at this point,” Risch said.
Republican Senator Risch is up for reelection in November, so it appears he’s actually listening to his constituents. This is encouraging. It shows that contacting your Senators works, especially during election years. This is how democracy is supposed to work.
Responding to similar concerns from other Senators—including Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), and John Hickenlooper (D-CO)—he pretty much gave a different version of the same answer: that it’s up to Congress to mandate public land sales.
Not once did Steve Pearce voluntarily say he’d changed his mind and now opposes federal public land sales, leaving the door of doubt wide open. Remember that he has congressionally granted authority under FLPMA to sell an unlimited number of parcels of 2,500 acres or less.
Besides Pearce’s stance on federal ownership of lands, he wasn’t questioned particularly intensively on other issues.
Pressed by Senator Angus King (I-ME) about renewable energy and by Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) about staffing at the BLM, he basically gave non-answers.
So, while Steve Pearce failed to reassure concerned public land owners—also known as American taxpayers—he did manage to show his inexperience or, I should say, blatant ignorance of ecology and conservation.
I feel that this is something many people who watched the Senate nomination hearing this morning may have missed. Just consider the following quote by Steve Pearce, possibly the next director of America’s biggest public land management agency.
It’s jaw-dropping, frankly.
Talking about forest management, he said he’d spoken to Senators about “the need to go in and aggressively begin to remove the fuels.”
Here it comes: “If we do that, then we’re going to increase the water supply in the West, which is always a problem. Every tree uses a certain amount of water that should be percolating down into the aquifers, reaching the streams and rivers and springs.”
“And so, those large-scale thinning projects of tens of thousands of acres instead of hundreds of acres is something that I visualize,” former congressman Pearce admitted.
Let’s repeat this, though: Steve Pearce—the person nominated by President Trump to control 245 million acres of public lands—thinks that the trees are to blame for the West’s droughts. Quite literally, he said that removing trees would increase the West’s water supply.
I guess canopy cover, shade, and carbon storage don’t matter if that tree also drinks some water…
Additionally, it’s worth pointing out that Pearce uttered that nonsense in response to a question from Senator Steve Daines (R-MT), who hasn’t exactly hidden his raving support for Pearce as BLM director.
I think it’d be helpful for Mr. Daines to remember he’s up for reelection later this year, too, and that he might want to take into consideration that, according to a January 21 poll, no less than 74% of Republican voters in Montana oppose Pearce’s nomination.
If Daines votes to confirm Pearce—combined with other stuff he’s doing to reduce wilderness protections in Montana through is absurdly named Montana Sportsmen Conservation Act (a bill that would benefit neither sportsmen nor conservation)—I am guaranteeing right now that he’ll lose his senatorship in November.
I also have to say that, although the questioning by Democrats on the Committee was rather soft, it’s quite likely they’ve all made up their mind at this point.
It would blow my mind if any Democrat on this Committee votes in favor of this dangerous BLM director nomination. To me, it seemed as if they just wanted to get Pearce to make some statements on the record, under oath—so that they can hold him more accountable, perhaps even impeach, later on.
Pretty much all Republicans, including the aforementioned Steve Daines, appeared to support his nomination. Some, like Senator John Hoeven (R-ND), did so very enthusiastically. Only Idaho’s James Risch showed some skepticism—and, it’s absolutely worth pointing out again that that was entirely due to pushback from all kinds of public lands users across his state, and the fact he’s running for reelection.
Now that the nomination hearing is over, the actual Committee vote on Pearce’s nomination won’t take place for about another week. This gives us a bit more time to continue contacting the Republicans on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
I am going to copy-paste the call-to-action I included in yesterday’s article, which was partially about this nomination hearing as well. It remains as applicable during the next seven days as it was yesterday.
How to Take Action Against Steve Pearce’s Nomination
Below are all Republican members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, ranked alphabetically by state, along with their Facebook and/or Instagram pages. (In case you’re not on those social media platforms, I’ve also included their phone numbers.)
Please take a minute this week to message them on Facebook/Instagram or—probably even more effectively—leave a comment on their latest social media post and tell them to oppose the nomination of Steve Pearce as BLM director.
The reason I’ve been focusing specifically on social media instead of the traditional phone calls is that Senator Martin Heinrich (D-NM)—the ranking member of this very Senate committee and one of the most pro-public lands politicians in Congress—said the following on the MeatEater Podcast last month, describing the pushback against last summer’s sell-off attempt:
“People just stepped up and the spontaneous nature of their pushback was very much rooted in social media. And so normally, as an elected official, you can choose to ignore the people calling the front desk. You can choose to ignore the email, but any member of [Congress] is on their phone a good couple of hours a day, and they couldn’t get away from it.”
(That’s still an episode that’s very much worth watching, by the way.)
Let’s flood their posts with comments, urging them to protect our precious public lands and waters against privatization, pollution, and profiteering.
Remember: be direct, be concise, but above all, be polite. You can’t convince anyone by being rude.
Additionally, the senators whose name is CAPITALIZED are those who are up for reelection in November. Feel free to remind them that you’re watching how they vote.
REPUBLICAN SENATE ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Lisa Murkowski (Alaska)
TOM COTTON (Arkansas)
JAMES RISCH (Idaho)
BILL CASSIDY (Louisiana)
CINDY HYDE-SMITH (Mississippi)
STEVE DAINES (Montana)
John Hoeven (North Dakota)
David McCormick (Pennsylvania)
Mike Lee (Utah)
Jim Justice (West Virginia)
John Barrasso (Wyoming)
You can watch the full Senate nomination hearing here.
Thanks for helping to protect our public lands and waters!
See you out there,
Bram