The Bureau of Land Management has a new potential leader: former New Mexico congressman, Steve Pearce. Earlier this month, President Trump appointed Pearce to be the agency director, a role in which he will be responsible for managing the BLM’s 245 million surface acres, and 700-million-acre subsurface mineral estate.
The selection has raised concern among conservation and hunter groups, given Pearce’s track record on public-land-related decisions. Though a decorated war veteran, a successful oil executive, and a two-term congressman, his voting record and other actions have demonstrated a distaste for public lands and a soft spot for extractive resource development. It’s an interesting juxtaposition for someone tasked with running the largest public land management agency in the country.
Prior to entering the realm of politics, Pearce served in the U.S. Air Force as a C-130 pilot, flying 518 hours of combat flight in the Vietnam War. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and two Air Medals—some of the highest achievements attainable in the Air Force—and seven additional medals.
Following his military service, Pearce moved back home to New Mexico and built an oilfield service company called Lea Fishing Tools (“fishing” in the oil industry refers to the retrieval of equipment lost down well holes). From there, he ventured into local politics and was elected to the New Mexico House of Representatives, where he served from 1996 to 2000.
Then, in 2003, he shifted to federal politics when he was elected as a Republican representative for New Mexico. Shortly after, he sold his oilfield company for $12 million. At the time, he was serving on both the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, and on a newly-formed Affordable Natural Gas Task Force. The sale raised some questions, given the fact that the buyer (Key Energy) had testified before the task force six weeks before the deal was penned; however, the House ethics committee found that Pearce had operated in compliance with all rules.
Pearce served in the House from 2003 to 2009, and again from 2011 to 2019. Over that time, he racked up a mixed record of both supporting sportsmen’s initiatives, but also western oil and gas expansion.
On the sportsmen’s side, Pearce voted for the Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act of 2017, which created an “open until closed” policy for federal lands, essentially mandating that lands be open to hunting, fishing, and recreation unless otherwise noted. (Interestingly, the act also permanently exempted hunting and fishing tackle from EPA regulations on lead content, arguing that “no reasonable alternatives” to the traditional ammo and tackle exist).
However, Pearce swung the opposite direction numerous times, repeatedly supporting or voting for measures to downsize federal public lands. Backcountry Hunters & Anglers reports that Pearce penned a letter to House Speaker John Boehner in 2012, suggesting public-land sales as a means of closing the federal deficit. “Strategically transferring ownership of [BLM & Forest Service 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,” Pearce wrote. At the time, he was chairman of the Western Congressional Caucus—a powerful voice in Washington.
Meanwhile, Pearce also co-sponsored the Hunting, Education, and Recreational Development Act, which would have authorized the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture to sell public lands to states or to private entities, with 15% of proceeds going toward education initiatives. Ultimately, the bill was never pushed through.
Still, Peace continued to advocate for reducing federally-held lands—with a particularly keen eye for national monuments. In 2017, he supported a bill that would have limited the president’s ability to create new national monuments (but would’ve still allowed the president to shrink them). At a congressional hearing that year, Pearce advocated for cutting the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument in New Mexico from 500,000 acres to 60,000 acres. The bill was also unsuccessful, but in his new role with the BLM, Pearce will likely resume where he left off in fighting against national monuments and other conservation designations in the name of energy development.
However, the director position is complex and comes with a host of other responsibilities beyond managing oil and gas permitting. In addition to energy development, the BLM also administers nearly 18,000 grazing leases, a wildland firefighting program with several thousand employees (the largest in the Department of Interior), and a plethora of conservation and rangeland-improvement projects. As a result, the BLM was without a permanent, appointed director from 2017 to 2021. Recently, Tracy Stone-Manning served in the position from 2021 to early 2025, but the role has been vacant for nearly a year now.
If the Senate confirms his appointment, Pearce will step in at a critical juncture for the agency. The BLM is currently working to rescind the 2024 Public Lands Rule, which enshrined a multiple-use mandate on all BLM lands. A public comment period on the initiative ended on November 10, and a decision is expected to be made soon. Its outcome could set the tone for Pearce’s time at the helm.
Feature image of Steve Pearce via Wikicommons.
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