Sierra Club Statement on Trump’s Nomination of Steve Pearce to Lead BLM

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, Donald Trump announced his latest pick to run the Bureau of Land Management.

In an announcement Wednesday, Trump named ex-U.S. Representative Steve Pearce (R-NM) as the next leader of the land management agency. BLM manages approximately 245 million acres of public surface land and an additional 700 million acres of subsurface mineral rights.

In Congress, Pearce supported expanding oil and gas drilling and fracking on federal lands, including in the Permian Basin, voted against measures to address the causes and impacts of climate change, and tried to shrink the size of existing National Monuments. Pearce served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2001-2009, and again from 2011-2019. He was the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in New Mexico in 2008 and for governor in 2018. He lost both races.

Pearce is Trump's second nominee to run BLM. His first pick, former head of the Western Energy Alliance Kathleen Sgamma, withdrew her nomination after emails condemning Trump's response to the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021, came to light.

In response, Dan Ritzman, Director of Conservation at Sierra Club, released the following statement:

"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. 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. Time and time again, Donald Trump has shown he thinks the primary beneficiaries of our shared natural heritage should be billionaires and corporate polluters, and not the American people."

About the Sierra Club

The Sierra Club is America's largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with millions of members and supporters. In addition to protecting every person's right to get outdoors and access the healing power of nature, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action. For more information, visit https://www.sierraclub.org.