Former Representative Steve Pearce was nominated by President Trump to head the Bureau of Land Management last November. With hearings surrounding his nomination expected to start soon, southern New Mexicans who he used to represent have differing views on his possible tenure.
In late January, a group of 31 elected officials from New Mexico signed a letter that called for former representative Steve Pearce’s nomination to be the director of the Bureau of Land Management.
The group, including Las Cruces Public School board member and director for the Friends of the Organ Mountain Desert Peaks Patrick Nolan, said that his past openness for selling public land and closeness with the oil and gas industry makes him not a good fit for the role.
“While in congress, Steve Pearce has a quite extensive history around supporting legislation that would sell off public lands both BLM, DOI, and Forest Service lands. He has a long history of legislation against the Antiquities Act which has been a really important tool to conserve land across the country including the Organ Mountain Desert Peaks National Monument,” Nolan said.
According to their website, the BLM manages 1 in every 10 acres of land in the United States. The Bureau manages the land for a variety of uses including energy development, livestock grazing, recreation, and timber harvesting all while balancing natural, historical, and cultural concerns.
“Its a lot of land to manage,” Nolan said.
Nolan said that he worries that this balance could be undone.
“As we are thinking about how to address climate change and capitalize on outdoor recreation, the BLM director has a significant role in that. How is funding prioritized, we look at management plans, are we putting funding towards management plans or are we selling off public lands for extractive private industries and losing that cherished asset that we have as a community,” Nolan said.
In addition to these concerns, Nolan said that Pearce has been on the wrong side of this issue in the past.
“As a congress man, he vehemently opposed the designation of Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument. I think his last proposal was to just keep it the Organs and really reduce it in size significantly and in the years since we have really seen this place really be an overwhelming success story,” Nolan said.
However, not everyone is viewing his nomination in such a harsh light. After the nomination was announced, The National Cattleman’s Beef Association put out a press release calling for Pearce to be confirmed swiftly saying he “understands the important role that public lands play across the West” and that his “experience makes him thoroughly qualified to lead the BLM and tackle the issues federal lands ranchers are facing.”
Past president and current chair for the Litigation Committee for the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association Alisa Ogden said that she supports him for the position because he treats farmers and ranchers well.
“I really appreciate how he has been pro-agriculture. I also farm and ranch and two-thirds of our ranch is on Bureau of Land Management land permitted grazing and so I am extremely interested in having someone who I know personally who knows about federal land in New Mexico specifically but also in the western United States,” Ogden said.
As for some of the concerns about selling some of the public land, Ogden said that the situation has more nuance than that. She said that there are cases when BLM land is not being used productively and that the process would have guardrails.
“I do not think it would be willy-nilly, I have not heard him saying that he is in favor of that but I have also heard others say that ‘Oh he was in the oil and gas industry he will give them favors’ but I think that is selling Steve short. He is very deliberate in how he thinks about things and he is not going to make these unilateral decisions that are not held by the people above him. He will have an undersecretary and a secretary to answer to so these won't be unilateral decisions,” Ogden said.
Ogden continued by saying that she thinks he has a good track record of listening to the people he represents.
“I think that he looks at all aspects of what relationships are with the constituents and I have confidence that he will do that as director of the BLM. He will look at the multiuse factor and he will be fair in how he looks at it,” Ogden said.
No confirmation hearing for Pearce has been scheduled.
