For Immediate Release
February 25, 2026
Contact:
Erik Molvar, Western Watersheds Project, (307) 399-7910, emolvar@westernwatersheds.org
Pearce refuses to recant public land selloff positions in Senate testimony
WASHINGTON – Former U.S. Congressman Stevan Pearce testified today before a Senate panel tasked with considering his nomination to become the Director of the Bureau of Land Management, an agency that manages 245 million acres of public land and 700 million acres of public subsurface mineral estate. At the center of the closely-watched hearing was whether Pearce would disavow his past calls for large-scale selloffs of western public lands. He did not.
“The testimony we saw today was a defiant rebuke to all who value their public lands, not just for recreation but for their wildlife, their important historical and cultural sites, and public access, and an indication that if confirmed, Pearce will push the envelope as far as it can go to strip public lands from federal ownership wherever the law allows,” said Erik Molvar, Executive Director of Western Watersheds Project.
When confronted with direct questions from several senators on whether he had reversed his past statements supporting large-scale land selloffs, Pearce declined, at one point stating, “I’m not sure that I’ve changed.”
“Pearce was given the opportunity to walk back his past advocacy for large scale selloffs, and instead of recanting, he pivoted to limitations in federal law that might block large-scale selloffs, and committed to taking his cues from Congress to pursue public lands sales on a piecemeal basis,” said Molvar. “Pearce’s responses, taken together, indicate that he still harbors an agenda to divest federal public lands throughout the West, and intends to use every legally available pathway to get there.”
Prior to the armed standoffs at Bunkerville, Nevada in 2014 and Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016, Steve Pearce participated in a Bundy-style event inside New Mexico’s Lincoln National Forest in which he cut down a living tree without a permit as an act of defiance against federal restrictions on logging to protect the rare Mexican spotted owl. Speaking at the protest about National Forest logging decisions and fire policies he disagreed with, Pearce remarked, “That’s the reason the founding fathers did not want Washington running your business.”
In the context of testimony on Resource Management Plans, Pearce also outlined his philosophy that local communities, often with close ties to extractive industries, should play the primary role in directing the management of federal public lands. This approach has long been promoted as a pathway to accelerate logging, grazing, mining, and drilling on public lands by shifting decision-making away from national public oversight.
“Putting local governments in the driver’s seat of the planning and management of public lands guarantees that commercial exploitation of those lands will take precedence over conservation and the public interest every time,” said Molvar. “Every American has an equal stake in federal public lands and how they’re managed, so putting local governments – which are rife with conflicts of interest – in charge of federal land decisions is not much different from privatizing those lands and letting developers, ranchers, and industries buy them outright. I think we just got a look at Pearce’s back-up plan.”
Pearce will next face a committee vote, and if his nomination passes out of committee, a full vote of the Senate will be required for confirmation.
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