Sierra Membership Assertion on Trump’s Nomination of Steve Pearce to Lead BLM

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Ex-U.S. Rep. has a historical past of opposition to nationwide monuments.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Right now, Donald Trump introduced his newest choose to run the Bureau of Land Administration.

In an announcement Wednesday, Trump named ex-U.S. Consultant Steve Pearce (R-NM) as the subsequent chief of the land administration company. BLM manages roughly 245 million acres of public floor land and a further 700 million acres of subsurface mineral rights.

In Congress, Pearce supported increasing oil and fuel drilling and fracking on federal lands, together with within the Permian Basin, voted towards measures to handle the causes and impacts of local weather change, and tried to shrink the dimensions of present Nationwide Monuments. Pearce served within the U.S. Home of Representatives from 2001-2009, and once more from 2011-2019. He was the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in New Mexico in 2008 and for governor in 2018. He misplaced each races.

Pearce is Trump’s second nominee to run BLM. His first choose, former head of the Western Vitality Alliance Kathleen Sgamma, withdrew her nomination after emails condemning Trump’s response to the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021, got here to gentle.

In response, Dan Ritzman, Director of Conservation at Sierra Membership, launched the next assertion:

“We New Mexicans have had a entrance row seat to Steve Pearce’s pro-polluter profession and rejected it, but Donald Trump thinks he’s the correct option to oversee the tens of millions of acres of public lands in New Mexico and throughout the West. Pearce is a local weather change denier, an ally of the oil and fuel trade, and an opponent of the landscapes and waters that generations of Individuals have explored and treasured. Time and time once more, Donald Trump has proven he thinks the first beneficiaries of our shared pure heritage needs to be billionaires and company polluters, and never the American folks.”

Concerning the Sierra Membership: The Sierra Membership is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental group, with tens of millions of members and supporters. Along with defending each particular person’s proper to get open air and entry the therapeutic energy of nature, the Sierra Membership works to advertise clear power, safeguard the well being of our communities, shield wildlife, and protect our remaining wild locations via grassroots activism, public schooling, lobbying, and authorized motion. For extra info, go to www.sierraclub.org.

Featured picture: “Willow Flats space and Teton Vary in Grand Teton Nationwide Park” by Michael Gäbler (CC BY 3.0 license).