BREAKING: Pearce Confirmed as Director of BLM

Steve Pearce has been confirmed as the new Director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). This places one of the nation’s most vocal advocates for privatizing public lands at the helm of an agency responsible for stewarding nearly 250 million acres of public lands for all Americans. 

Since 1946, the BLM has been tasked with sustaining the health, diversity, and productivity of public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations. The agency operates under a dual mandate: that of managing public land for multiple uses while conserving natural, historical, and cultural resources.

Wyoming has a lengthy resume of managing more than eighteen million acres of those BLM wildlands - nearly thirty percent of the state - for energy development, ranching, recreation, and conservation. Wyoming residents also overwhelmingly support keeping public lands in public hands. The state’s outdoor recreation economy, which relies heavily on access to BLM lands, generates over two billion dollars annually and supports nearly sixteen thousand jobs.

Pearce’s decades-long record of pushing to sell off federal lands stands in direct contradiction to the core mission of the BLM and threatens the judicious management of BLM wildlands both nationwide and here in Wyoming.

“For Wyoming, these aren’t empty threats — they’re a tired playbook for robbing the shared public lands that compel us to call this state home over any other,” says WWA BLM Wildlands Director, Jennie Mans. “Pearce’s record reveals someone who sees public lands primarily as resources to liquidate, rather than steward. He ushers in an ominous chapter for the BLM, where the stories we share with future generations may be just that - stories of a once-wild place. WWA is obviously disappointed in this outcome and we will continue to work with our federal and local partners to steward these hardworking landscapes, despite the challenges, as we hold Pearce accountable for his actions."