Steve Pearce, President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Bureau of Land Management, is a litmus test for Western senators who say they care about keeping public lands public, writes Aaron Weiss of the Center for Western Priorities.
A former New Mexico congressman, Pearce spent 14 years undermining public lands, Weiss says, seeking to gut wildlife protections and sell off huge amounts of public land. Pearce has described public land as so vast that most of it "we do not even need.” Weiss warns that if confirmed, Pearce's role running the BLM would amount to liquidation.