Do Western senators really care about keeping public lands in public hands? Steve Pearce, President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Bureau of Land Management, is a litmus test of their commitment.

Throughout his political career, Pearce has worked to privatize and undermine our public lands. As a New Mexico congressman, he co-sponsored several bills to dispose of national public lands. This alone ought to disqualify him from running the agency charged with stewarding 245 million acres for current and future generations.

In a 2012 letter to House leadership, Pearce argued that the federal government owns “vast” land holdings, “most of (which) we do not even need,” and called for a massive sell-off to pay down the national debt.

Pearce’s vision for our public lands is not conservation o

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