Senate Confirms Pearce to Lead BLM in Party-Line Vote

The U.S. Senate narrowly voted to approve Steve Pearce’s nomination to lead the Bureau of Land Management. Pearce, a 78-year-old Republican, has deep ties to the oil and gas industry and a record of supporting federal land sales.

With a 46-43 vote along party lines, the former U.S. Representative from New Mexico has been cleared to lead the country’s largest management agency. As head of the BLM, Pearce will oversee 245 million acres of public land and 700 million acres of its subsurface mineral estate.

Montana Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy both voted to support Pearce’s nomination, which was considered “en bloc” alongside nearly 50 other positions, ranging from U.S. marshals to assistant secretaries of defense, among others.

Neither Daines nor Sheehy immediately responded to a request for comment on Pearce’s nomination Monday evening. 

Prior to his political career, Pearce owned an oil and gas well-servicing company with his wife, Cynthia. A veteran pilot in the Vietnam War, Pearce has described his father’s employment in the oil fields of western Texas as pivotal to the Pearce family’s emergence from poverty.

More than 80 conservation and public land access groups wary of Pearce’s record on public land sales and environmental protection opposed his nomination in a January letter to the Senate Energy Committee.

Groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, Montana Conservation Voters and WildEarth Guardians argued in the letter that Pearce has demonstrated a willingness to play an “unwavering part in President Trump’s anti-environmental and anti-democratic agenda by heeding unpopular directives, propping up polluters, and selling off and selling out our public lands.”

Alan Zibel, research director with Public Citizen, a consumer- and citizens’- rights advocacy group, wrote in a Monday afternoon statement that Pearce is “primed to exploit his role at BLM for profit.”

“Unless you’re a fossil fuel or mining fat cat, his confirmation is a massive loss and a serious blow to anyone who cares about our nation’s extraordinary public spaces,” Zibel said.

Agricultural groups along with oil and gas lobbyists, including the National Public Lands Council, the National Cattlement’s Beef Association, and Western Energy Alliance, have supported Pearce’s nomination. 

In an emailed statement, Western Energy Alliance President Melissa Simpson said that Pearce understands the agency’s multiple-use mission, which directs BLM to consider natural resource development alongside the conservation of resources for future generations.

“His tenure in Congress and his time as a small business owner in the oil field show he’s a champion of multiple-uses of public lands from expanding domestic energy production, supporting grazing and recreation, and protecting landscapes through targeted conservation,” Simpson said. “We look forward to his leadership at BLM.”

Trump has described Pearce as being supportive of the White House’s “drill, baby, drill” energy development agenda. During Trump’s first term, the Senate did not confirm a BLM director. Unconfirmed political appointees and acting directors administered the agency instead.