Western senators cannot support this Trump nominee who wants to liquidate public lands (Opinion)
Do Western senators really care about keeping masses lands in constituents hands Steve Pearce President Donald Trump s nominee to run the Bureau of Land Management is a litmus test of their commitment Throughout his political career Pearce has worked to privatize and undermine our citizens lands As a New Mexico congressman he co-sponsored several bills to dispose of national residents lands This alone ought to disqualify him from running the agency charged with stewarding million acres for current and future generations In a letter to House leadership Pearce argued that the federal cabinet owns vast land holdings largest part of which we do not even need and called for a massive sell-off to pay down the national debt Pearce s vision for our residents lands is not conservation or even balanced management it s liquidation President Trump has been down this road before During his first term he nominated anti-public-lands zealot William Perry Pendley to run the BLM Pendley never even received a hearing and the White House dropped the nomination after his record was revealed Pendley went on to write the residents lands chapter of the now-notorious Project blueprint for a second Trump administration Pendley spent his career as a lawyer arguing that the federal leadership should not own citizens lands Steve Pearce has gone even further From inside Congress Pearce spent years undermining general lands seeking to gut wildlife protections and sell off huge amounts of community land Pearce s nomination comes as our general lands are being attacked from all sides Over the last months President Trump has elevated personnel such as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins both of whom view our society lands as nothing more than assets to monetize through drilling mining and logging These representatives are as of now working to execute Trump s vision of selling out masses assets for private profit Pearce would accelerate this effort liquidating lands to the highest bidder including corporations and luxury developers Even by up-to-date standards Pearce s citizens lands record is radical It is also unpopular This spring Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee tried to include a general land sale provision in the sprawling budget bill framing it as a housing remedy The measure would have mandated the sale of - million acres of BLM and Forest Operation lands But Lee s amendment triggered immediate backlash from hunters outdoor recreation groups and Western lawmakers Within days he abandoned the effort If the Senate rejected Lee s market-rate sell-off as radical it should be easy now to reject a nominee whose goal is to get rid of even more population land That brings us to the Senate Stewardship Caucus co-chaired by a Republican Tim Sheehy of Montana and a Democrat Martin Heinrich of New Mexico It launched last month to advance bipartisan efforts to conserve the nation s lands and waters with science-based framework The caucus has been applauded by hunting outdoor recreation and conservation organizations as a promising start for defending community access and wildlife Pearce s nomination is the caucus s first real test If its members cannot draw a bright line at a nominee who has worked tirelessly to sell off general lands and weaken laws that protect them then its vision of stewardship is nothing but empty branding The stakes are immense BLM s multiple-use mandate requires balancing capacity grazing recreation and conservation under long-term land use plans grounded in science and inhabitants input That mission collapses if the agency s leader believes we must reverse this trend of population ownership of the very lands he is charged with managing Westerners understand what happens when responsible stewardship is abandoned Rural communities lose the long-term economic engine that healthy inhabitants lands provide Hunters anglers and campers lose access they have relied on for generations Steve Pearce s nomination is a referendum on whether Congress believes our shared lands still belong to all Americans The Stewardship Caucus and every senator who proposes to care about the West s outdoor heritage should reject Pearce s nomination America s populace lands are a unique legacy we pass down to future generations not a portfolio to liquidate Aaron Weiss is a contributor to Writers on the Range writersontherange org an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West He is deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities and co-host of The Landscape podcast Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns editorials and more To send a letter to the editor about this article submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail
