We thought the fight over selling off America’s public lands had been settled in July. But President Donald Trump’s nomination of former New Mexico Republican Congressman Steve Pearce to lead the Bureau of Land Management makes clear the threat is back – and more brazen than ever. Pearce embodies the belief that public lands exist to be liquidated, drilled, or handed off to private interests. Putting him in charge of the BLM is the political equivalent of putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.
Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) clearly recognizes the danger. On Dec. 4, he took the rare step of announcing – before any confirmation hearing – that he will vote no. Senators do not do this lightly, especially those on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. But Hickenlooper didn’t mince words: Americans deserve a BLM director who is “a true steward,” and “Steve Pearce is NOT that person.” Pearce’s record attacking environmental protections and backing the sale of public lands, he said, proves the administration still sees shared lands as “assets for sale.”
He’s right to sound the alarm early. This nomination cannot be treated as business as usual.
And the opposition isn’t just from Democrats. A scathing Nov. 18 column in the Washington Post by conservative Republican Patrick M. Brenner of New Mexico lays out why Pearce is unfit even by his own party’s standards. According to Brenner, Pearce’s six years as New Mexico’s GOP chairman were defined by failure: he couldn’t raise money, couldn’t win elections, and alienated core Republican constituencies – including oil and gas producers, who began donating more to Democrats because the party under Pearce lost “power and purpose.” His term was marked by factional warfare, not leadership.
If Pearce couldn’t unite his own party in a small state, how can he manage the BLM – an agency that must balance the needs of ranchers, tribal nations, environmentalists, recreationists, and energy producers? The job demands diplomacy, credibility, and respect across the West. Pearce brings none of that. What he brings is an unbroken record of trying to get rid of the lands he would be charged with managing – 245 million acres.
Over 14 years in Congress, “Sell-off Steve” built a record aimed at shrinking or disposing of America’s public lands. A former oil field services owner, he worked to ease life for drillers while undermining protections the public relies on. He fought national monument safeguards, pushed the HEARD Act to force sell-offs, and promoted schemes to liquidate what he called “vast lands … we do not even need.” He urged counties to “take control” of federal lands and praised officials who threatened Forest Service staff. This is the opposite of sound land management: the places we cherish – from Phil’s World to Canyon of the Ancients to Hovenweep and beyond – need investment and real stewardship, not liquidation.
Even former hard-line Interior Secretary James Watt – hardly remembered as a defender of wilderness – understood there were limits. In 1983, the push to sell federal lands drew such intense backlash that Watt shelved it to protect President Reagan politically. If even Watt recognized the danger, today’s push is extreme.
Yet Pearce represents exactly that revived extremism. Under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the BLM director does have disposal authority – significant authority. In the hands of someone who believes public lands should be “returned” to states, bulldozed by counties, or auctioned for drilling, the risk is immediate.
Here in Colorado and across the West, the places we hike, hunt, bike, graze, and gather depend on steady, serious stewardship. They cannot survive a director who sees their highest value as mineral potential.
This nomination also tests the new bipartisan Senate Stewardship Caucus, co-chaired by Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.), whose founding members include Sen. John Hickenlooper and five other senators. If the caucus cannot draw a bright line at a nominee whose career has been dedicated to selling off public lands, then its talk of “stewardship” is meaningless.
The Senate must vote Pearce down. If confirmed, he would have both the authority and ideological zeal to dismantle America’s greatest inheritance – our unmatched public lands estate.
For more than four decades, Americans have been unequivocal: Public lands are not for sale. Not now. Not ever.
