OUTDOOR LIFE OPINION: What’s So Bad About Stevan Pearce, Trump’s Pick to Run the BLM? For Starters, His Public-Land Track Record
Trump’s Bureau of Land Management nominee faces the Senate on Wednesday, and his own mixed record on America’s public lands.
By Andrew McKean / Published Feb 24, 2026
Everybody wants to talk about Stevan Pearce, President Trump’s pick to run the Bureau of Land Management. Everybody, that is, except Pearce himself.
Pearce, a veteran, former state legislator and congressman from New Mexico, oil-and-gas executive, and former chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, will appear before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Wednesday morning to consider his nomination to the role that oversees 245 million acres of America’s public lands, plus another 700 million acres of subsurface mineral estate across the U.S.
Conservation groups and public-land advocates slam Pearce as a public-land denier. Meanwhile, livestock groups and the energy-extraction industry endorse Pearce’s nomination for his support of “opening up valuable federal lands for safe and responsible oil and gas development.” In a short statement shortly after Trump’s nomination of Pearce in November, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and Public Lands Council said Pearce “understands the important role that public lands play across the West. Pearce’s experience makes him thoroughly qualified to lead the BLM and tackle the issues federal lands ranchers are facing.”
How a single person can incite such polarized views is an artifact of this political moment. The same ideological wedge that currently divides neighbors and political parties on issues ranging from immigration policy to gender identity is the same wedge that divides public-land users. That divide will be evident during Pearce’s nomination and confirmation.
To cut through the sound bites and press statements, Outdoor Life attempted to contact Pearce himself, to get his views of public-land management, how he might administer the BLM’s heralded multiple-use mandate, and how he’d balance Trump’s Unleashing American Energy executive order with the enduring conservation and recreation values of BLM lands. But despite several attempts to talk with Pearce, he was unavailable for a conversation previewing the perspectives he’ll share with the Senate committee.
“This is not unusual behavior,” one of Pearce’s handlers insisted in response to OL’s request for an interview. “Historically, nominees don’t make themselves available to the media ahead of confirmation hearings.”
Fair enough. We’re left with his record and with various perspectives of how Stevan Pearce might manage the agency responsible for managing nearly 10 percent of America’s land, and the majority of public land in the Western U.S.
‘Sell-Off Steve’
For environmentalists and many hunting and fishing groups, Pearce’s accession to the BLM’s top post could accelerate and execute the public-land sale ideas expressed by Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) last summer in the context of the One Big Beautiful Bill. Lee’s idea, which nearly derailed the federal spending blueprint, was to sell portions of the U.S.’s public-land estate to offset tax cuts to wealthy Americans and balance the budget.
Pearce has expressed support for divestment of federal land, a position that’s unacceptable to a group of 154 mostly preservation-oriented organizations that wrote to Lee, chairman of the very Senate committee that will consider Pearce’s nomination.
“We write to strongly urge you to oppose the nomination of Stevan Pearce to be the Director of the Bureau of Land Management,” the groups wrote Lee and Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), the ranking minority member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “Mr. Pearce’s record in Congress, including his public support for selling off America’s public lands, his conflicts of interest with the oil and gas industry, and his efforts to undermine national monuments and the Antiquities Act, demonstrates that he is the wrong candidate to lead this complex multiple-use agency.”
Another 81 land-protection groups echoed that position, asking Lee and Heinrich to oppose Pearce’s nomination.