Selling public lands

Trump's pick to manage 245M acres notoriously hellbent on selling public lands

By Sam Mauhay-Moore

Trump's pick to run the largest land management agency in the United States has a history of trying to sell off public land, and his nomination is putting environmental advocates on edge. 

On Nov. 5, Trump nominated former U.S. Representative Steve Pearce (R-New Mexico) to be the Director of the Bureau of Land Management, the agency responsible for 245 million acres of public land and 700 million acres of underground mineral estate, most of which is located in the western U.S. Pearce served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2003 to 2009, then again from 2011 to 2019. During that time, he became known for his efforts to privatize public land.

In a 2012 speech to Mitt Romney supporters, he criticized what he called Teddy Roosevelt's "big ideas of big forests and big national parks" in the American West, and asserted that Romney's election would "reverse this trend of public ownership of lands." Later that year, he co-authored a letter to Congress that pushed for selling public lands to oil and gas drilling in order to offset an Obama-era government spending deficit. 

"Over 90% of this land is located in the western states and most of it we do not even need," the letter reads. 

In 2016, Pearce co-sponsored the HEARD Act, which was written with the intent to "provide for the orderly disposal of certain Federal lands" by offering them up for sale to local governments. 

In 2012, he called for the reduction of the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument in southern New Mexico, which was designated by President Obama, from roughly 500,000 acres to just 54,800. In 2017, Pearce co-sponsored a bill aimed at amending the Antiquities Act by placing limits on the designation of national monuments based on acreage and proximity to other monuments. 

"Previous Administrations abused their executive authority by designating overly expansive monuments under the Antiquities Act," Pearce said in a statement regarding the letter. 

Pearce has deep ties to the oil industry: Prior to his political career, he owned an oilfield services company headquartered in Hobbs, New Mexico, according to the Center for Western Priorities. He and his wife sold that company for $12 million in 2003. During his time in Congress, he owned companies that rented oilfield equipment to drilling companies. 

The Bureau of Land Management operates 13 million acres of public land in New Mexico, where Pearce ran for governor in 2018. His efforts to sell off public lands in the state "ultimately contributed to his loss to current Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham," the Center for Western Priorities wrote. 

"We New Mexicans have had a front row seat to Steve Pearce’s pro-polluter career and rejected it, yet Donald Trump thinks he’s the right choice to oversee the millions of acres of public lands in New Mexico and across the West," Sierra Club's director of conservation Dan Ritzman said in a statement following Pearce's nomination. "Pearce is a climate change denier, an ally of the oil and gas industry, and an opponent of the landscapes and waters that generations of Americans have explored and treasured." 

In a similar statement, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities Jennifer Rokala urged Congress to reject Pearce's nomination.

"Steve Pearce’s nomination is even more proof that President Trump and Interior Secretary Burgum are determined to undermine, sell out, and eventually sell off America’s public lands," Rokala said in the statement. "Pearce’s entire political career has been dedicated to blocking Americans’ access to public lands while giving the oil and gas industry free rein to drill and frack anywhere they wanted."

Pearce's nomination did, however, garner support from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. Pearce's legislation historically endorsed interests of the ranching industry: His calls to reduce the acreage of national monuments cited impacts to the grazing rights of local ranchers and impacts that monument designation would have on the economical viability of ranching operations. 

"Pearce’s experience makes him thoroughly qualified to lead the BLM and tackle the issues federal lands ranchers are facing," Kaitlynn Glover, NCBA's executive director of natural resources, said in the organization's statement. 

The U.S. Senate will hold a hearing to accept or reject Pearce's candidacy as BLM's director. A date for the hearing has not yet been announced.