California’s Conservation and Public Lands Groups Call on Padilla and Schiff to Oppose Nomination of Land Sell-Off Advocate Steve Pearce to Lead Bureau of Land Management
Contact:
Tim Woody, communications manager, The Wilderness Society, (907)223-243, twoody@tws.org
Hilary Stamper, communications director, CalWild, hstamper@calwild.org
Sacramento, Calif. (January 15, 2026) — Conservation, recreation, and wildlife organizations from across California submitted a letter to Senators Alex Padilla (D-CA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) today, urging them to oppose the nomination of Steve Pearce as Director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), citing his long and well-documented record of advocating for the sale and elimination of America’s public lands.
If confirmed, Pearce would oversee more than 250 million acres of BLM land nationwide, including 15 million acres in California, including popular places like the wild Kings Range Conservation Area on the north coast to the Mojave Trails National Monument in the Mojave Desert. The letter outlines multiple examples from Pearce’s record, including:
- co-sponsoring a sweeping 2016 land-disposal bill that would have authorized the sale and exchange of hundreds of thousands of acres of national public lands.
- advocating for liquidation of federal public lands as part of a 2012 deficit-reduction proposal, arguing that much of the West consists of “lands we do not even need.”
- publicly calling for the rollback of federal public-land ownership, pledging in a 2012 speech to work with a future administration to “reverse this trend of public ownership.” “Pearce’s long history of overt hostility to our national public lands renders him the least qualified of all possible candidates.
This nomination reflects the administration’s general disregard for the public good and our rights as Americans to access the outdoors,” said Mark Green, Executive Director of CalWild.
Earlier this year, Senators Padilla and Schiff stood up for keeping public lands in public hands. They helped lead efforts to defeat a proposal introduced by Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) to sell off millions of acres of public lands across the West. California conservation and public lands groups are warning that Pearce’s nomination presents an equally dire threat that must be met with opposition from the state’s senators once again.
“Public lands protect clean air and water, sustain wildlife and preserve our freedom to explore for future generations,” said Helen O’Shea, California State Director at The Wilderness Society. “The future of many of California’s, and our country’s, most iconic and beloved landscapes cannot be put in the hands of a man who believes they have no inherent value and who has made a practice of arguing for their destruction. We urge our senators to publicly oppose the nomination of Stevan Pearce to lead the Bureau of Land Management.”
The coalition urged Senators Padilla and Schiff to come out now strongly opposing Pearce’s nomination and again use their confirmation authority to protect public lands by voting against handing over control of the largest land management agency in the country to “Sell-off Steve.”
Photo: Mojave Desert, Linda Castro
