Seven times “Sell-off Steve” tried to dispose of America’s public lands
Trump’s nominee for BLM director is a long-time supporter of the administration’s goal to privatize public lands
Former U.S. Representative Steve Pearce, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management, is an avowed advocate of selling public lands, and his nomination is a clear endorsement of the plan to privatize and sell America’s public lands to the highest bidder. Pearce’s history reveals an extreme ideology focused on reducing public ownership and privatizing land for the benefit of developers and extractive industries over the American people.
Here are seven times Steve Pearce attempted to dispose of or undermine the management of America’s public lands:
1. Co-sponsoring the HEARD Act to sell off public lands
In 2016, Pearce co-sponsored the HEARD Act (H.R. 5386), which would have authorized the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to dispose of national public lands through sale or exchange to local governments. A press release from Representative Paul Gosar, who introduced the bill, justified the proposed sale of public lands by saying he had “heard repeatedly about significant challenges local communities face due to poor federal land management policies and the existence of large swaths of federal land within their jurisdiction.”
The press release claimed the bill was modeled after the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act (SNPLMA), a federal law allowing the limited sale of some national public lands around Las Vegas for housing development. The HEARD Act sought to hugely expand the reach of the land sale mechanism, targeting “hundreds of thousands of acres” of BLM lands for disposal across the West.
2. Leading a proposal to liquidate public lands to reduce the deficit
As part of a deficit reduction package in December 2012, Representatives Pearce and Rob Bishop proposed selling national public lands, “most of which we do not even need,” according to Pearce. He argued that transferring ownership “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.” This extremist argument ignores the fact that public lands generate billions of dollars through recreation and tourism.
3. Vowing to “reverse this trend of public ownership”
Pearce has explicitly expressed his desire to eliminate national public land ownership. In a 2012 speech, Pearce stated that if Mitt Romney were elected president, they would work together to “reverse this trend of public ownership of lands.” In the speech, Pearce also criticized historical conservation efforts, including “Teddy Roosevelt who had the big ideas of big forests and big national parks,” which he wrongly claimed deprived Western states of education funds. In reality, it is state trust lands, not national public lands, that are specifically set aside to generate revenue for public education.
4. Urging counties to take control of federal lands
At a 2011 town hall, Pearce urged counties to adopt an extreme and confrontational approach toward federal agencies, stating that they should take control of all the land within their boundaries, even land owned by the federal government.
Pearce embraced the extremist “Constitutional Sheriff” movement, which argues that the county is the highest law enforcement authority and has the power to overrule or ignore federal laws and activities. Pearce endorsed the idea of local law enforcement obstructing federal land managers’ activities on public lands, referencing an incident where the Otero County Sheriff threatened to arrest Forest Service staff who tried to interfere with the county’s unpermitted forest thinning project. In the same town hall, he also falsely claimed that in “many cases” the US does not actually own Forest Service land to begin with, because there was “no quit-claim deed properly executed between the states and the federal government, so the United States does not technically own the (forest) land.” This claim does not have any legal merit because the enabling acts for many western states, including New Mexico, explicitly say the states “forever disclaim all right and title” to unappropriated public lands within their boundaries.
5. Inciting Catron County to bulldoze the Gila National Forest
After a 2011 incident where Catron Country officials bulldozed through the San Francisco River in Gila National Forest without Clean Water Act permits or Forest Service permission, environmental groups accused Pearce of inciting the county to do so. Just days before the bulldozing, Pearce issued a news release declaring roads in the Gila National Forest “open for use,” stating that the Forest Service had “bullied the people of New Mexico into believing that they can close our roads.”
“Within a week or so, the county’s out there bulldozing,” said Cyndi Tuell, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity. “The coarse way to put it is they were giving the bird to the federal government, saying ‘We’re the county. We can do what we want.’ They are both legally and factually incorrect on that one.”
Pearce defended the county’s illegal actions, calling the bulldozing another “example of county governments attempting to locally manage their resources and better the lives of their citizens”.
6. Attempting to eliminate wilderness study areas and sell 60,000 acres
In 2008, Pearce introduced the Doña Ana County Planned Growth, Open Space and Rangeland Preservation Act (H.R. 6300). The legislation was a massive land-grab attempt that sought to nullify eight wilderness study areas—including the Organ Mountains WSA, which is now protected as Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument—and mandate the disposal of over 60,000 acres of BLM land.
The legislation was strongly opposed by Las Cruces residents and business leaders who relied on the wilderness study areas as an economic driver. A 2006 poll in Doña Ana County showed that 71 percent of voters said they opposed selling off public land in the area. “This is the asset that we sell every day to the people who come to Las Cruces,” said Judd Singer, a local developer and president of the Las Cruces Home Builders Association.
7. Introducing the public land “giveaway” bill
In 2006, Pearce introduced a bill to give local governments in Western states the right to claim passage through “any public lands ever owned by the United States” if claimed routes appear on any official map made before 1976. The bill would permit counties to claim rights of way through national parks, national forests, wilderness areas, and military bases and open trails to motorized vehicles. A Utah county commissioner said that it would legally allow the county to claim a right to every hiking trail in Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks, though they did not intend to do so. “We could argue that our rights of way across the national parks are valid, and we want them opened up as road today,” he said.
The threat to the very existence of public lands
Pearce’s record speaks for itself. He has a long history of sponsoring legislation to sell off national public lands and encouraging local municipalities to ignore federal laws. By nominating a figure who has spent decades trying to dispose of public lands, the Trump administration is pushing forward its goal to exploit, sell off, and privatize public lands. Confirming Pearce would put America’s public lands in the hands of someone who intends to destroy them, not steward them for future generations.
For more information, visit westernpriorities.org. Sign up for Look West to get daily public lands and energy news sent to your inbox, or subscribe to our podcast, The Landscape.