BLM nominee talks land sales, local management in Senate confirmation hearing

President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Bureau of Land Management attempted on Wednesday to reassure U.S. senators that neither he nor Interior Secretary Doug Burgum favor a large-scale selloff of federal land.

Steve Pearce, a Republican who spent seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and chaired New Mexico’s Republican Party, appeared before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to pitch lawmakers on his suitability for the job. 

It was also an opportunity for Pearce to outline his vision for the BLM, which oversees 245 million acres of land and 700 million acres of subsurface minerals in the U.S., including 8 million acres of land in Montana. If Pearce’s nomination is approved by the full Senate, he will assume the helm of the country’s largest land management agency.

Pearce has been nominated to the role formerly held by Tracy Stone-Manning, the Montanan who led the BLM under the Biden administration after narrowly clearing a Senate vote in 2021. 

Pearce, who served in the Vietnam War and owned an oil and gas well-servicing company prior to his political career, has come under fire from conservation groups and Democratic lawmakers who have questioned his intentions for the BLM. An agency with a “multiple use” mission, the BLM balances recreational and cultural resources alongside various forms of commercial enterprise, ranging from livestock grazing and fossil fuel development to hard-rock mining and logging.

During the Wednesday hearing, Pearce said he garnered an appreciation for “conserving and preserving” land by growing up on a small farm and during backpacking trips in wilderness areas after his return from the Vietnam War. He also suggested that the federal government has been largely misguided in its land management approach by acting as an “absentee landlord” that “rules over” states and local communities rather than partnering with them.

Shortly after Trump announced Pearce as his BLM pick in November, conservation groups opposed to his nomination began surfacing concerns about Pearce’s plans. A coalition of advocacy groups including Wild Montana, Montana Conservation Voters and Montana Wildlife Federation highlighted a 2012 letter that Pearce and others penned to then-House Speaker John Boehner as part of a federal deficit reduction proposal.

“Divesting the federal government of its vast land holdings could pay down the deficit and reduce spending. The federal government owns roughly 650 million acres of land or 1/3 of the entire landmass of our country. Over 90% of this land is located in the western states and most of it we do not even need,” the letter read. “Strategically transferring ownership of these lands where it makes sense would reduce duplicative land management costs, boost revenues through the resultant economic activity of more productive and local land management, and is consistent with the principles of federalism our founding fathers envisioned.”

Sen. Martin Heinrich, the ranking Democrat on the committee, who also hails from New Mexico, raised the issue of whether “the new BLM agenda” includes the large-scale sale of agency-administered land — an issue that both Republican and Democratic senators on the committee returned to repeatedly during the two-hour hearing.

Pearce responded that Interior Secretary Doug Burghum has said “that he does not visualize any sales of land.” Pearce added that he would “gladly” accept the help of the senators on the committee in identifying the “isolated” parcels that might be appropriate for sale. 

Asked by Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden if Pearce still holds a view that he previously expressed — that there is too much land under public ownership in the West — the nominee rationalized his past statements and referenced laws such as the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.

“I’m not so sure that I’ve changed. I’m not sure that I was not speaking out of sheer frustration with an agency on behalf of people that were being overwhelmed,” he said. “I do not believe that we’re going to go out and wholesale land from the federal government. That, again, has been stated by the [Interior] Secretary, and federal law says that we can’t do that.”

Montana’s representative on the committee, Republican Sen. Steve Daines, took a wide berth around the land transfer issue, instead asking Pearce if he supports the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the 60-year-old funding pot supported by offshore oil and gas revenues.

“Absolutely,” Pearce said, responding to Daines’ question about using LWCF money to expand hunting, fishing and recreational access to BLM land.

Daines also asked Pearce about his vision for forested BLM lands, a category that includes more than 1.3 million acres managed by the agency’s office spanning Montana and the Dakotas. Pearce echoed Daines’ preference for “active forest management,” arguing that it needs to be done at scale, and that the right approach is to “aggressively thin” forests rather than clear-cut them.

Shortly after the Wednesday hearing wrapped up, Wild Montana released a statement saying the organization is not convinced that Pearce’s priorities have changed, and that federal land will be safe.

“Pearce has a 15-year track record of wanting to privatize public lands — including the BLM lands he’d be responsible for. Halfhearted lip service doesn’t erase that history,” Wild Montana staff attorney Aubrey Bertram said in an emailed statement. “Pearce is just saying what he thinks will get him confirmed, but the truth is the same as it was yesterday: he’s unfit to serve at the BLM.”

The committee did not immediately vote on Pearce’s nomination. His nomination must be approved by a majority of U.S. senators.