Trump nominee to lead BLM dodges Colorado senator’s question on whether he supports public land sales

U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colorado, this week questioned President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management about his past support of selling off public lands.

After the nomination hearing in the Senate, Hickenlooper on Wednesday said he will not vote to confirm Stevan Pearce, citing Pearce’s previous statements supporting the sell-off of public lands — and his inability to disavow them.

“No way in hell I’m giving up the stewardship of our public lands to someone who has publicly fought to sell them off,” Hickenlooper said in a social media post.

Pearce has been nominated to be Trump’s director of the Bureau of Land Management. If approved by a majority vote in the Senate, Pearce would oversee the agency in charge of managing more than 250 million acres of public land.

A former congressman from New Mexico, Pearce has faced scrutiny during the nomination process due to his previous support of selling public lands.

When he was in Congress in 2016, Pearce co-sponsored a bill that would have authorized the U.S. Department of Interior, which houses the Bureau of Land Management, to auction off public lands. In 2012, he also penned a letter to then-U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, noting that the federal government owns 650 million acres of land and stating that “most of it we do not even need.”

A majority of the nation’s public lands are concentrated in the West. In Colorado, more than 8 million acres, or about 12.5% of the state, is managed by the Bureau of Land Management, according to the federal agency’s website.

“Colorado is deeply invested emotionally in our public lands,” Hickenlooper told Pearce during the hearing. “It’s not just the $17 billion in our outdoor recreation industry, but it’s a sense of connection to our history, to our identity — what it means to be a Coloradan.”

Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, the committee chair, said during the hearing that federal law “does not allow the mass sale of federal public lands. Absent an act of Congress authorizing such a thing, the question is moot.”

Lee last summer introduced an amendment into Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that would have allowed the federal government to sell millions of acres of public land. The amendment faced fierce opposition, including in Colorado, and failed to make it into the final version of the bill.

Hickenlooper said he heard from 80,000 Coloradans in opposition to Lee’s public land sell-offs last summer and has also heard widespread concern about Pearce’s nomination as Bureau of Land Management director.

“I think sometimes somebody in your position influences Congress,” Hickenlooper told Pearce. “I guess the question is, are you free of those past comments — and I could read back several — where you’ve supported the widespread sale of public lands?”

In response, Pearce said that he believes the Secretary of the Interior Doug Bergum “has been very clear” that federal law “prohibits any large-scale sale.” He said he intends to follow Bergum’s “lead on that there wouldn’t be any large-scale sale of lands.”

Hickenlooper pressed Pearce, asking how he would respond should Congress ask him his “personal opinion” on whether public land sales are a good idea, “if they might change such a statute.”

Pearce responded, “Well that, senator, is kind of a multidimensional question,” and began discussing the federal government’s “payment in lieu of taxes” laws, before Hickenlooper interrupted.

“There’s a lot of distrust and you’re going to have to work very hard to dispel that,” Hickenlooper said.

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet has also stated that he opposes Pearce’s nomination to lead the Bureau of Land Management, echoing concerns about his past statements supporting public land sell-offs.

“Pearce has shown he will be the first to sell off our public lands which sustain Colorado’s economy and way of life,” Bennet said in a social media post. “He will be an enforcer of Trump’s reckless ‘drill baby drill’ policies and will demolish the protections that ensure our kids and grandkids will benefit from public lands as we do today.”

The Center for Western Priorities, a Colorado-based conservation and advocacy organization, and environmental groups like the Sierra Club have also come out in opposition of Pearce’s nomination.

In a statement, Center for Western Priorities Deputy Director Aaron Weiss said Pearce “waffled” on the question of “whether he still believes the many, many things he’s written about land sell-off.”

The Western Energy Alliance, a coalition of oil and natural gas trade associations, however, has voiced its support for Pearce, stating that he is “exceptionally qualified” to lead the federal agency and would carry out Trump’s goals of “unleashing energy, expanding access to recreation and incentivizing conservation on public lands.”

Pearce’s nomination will be voted on by the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee before it goes to a full vote of the Senate, where Republicans have a 53-47 majority. Neither vote has been scheduled.