Pulse of the Land | The Man Who Would Sell Your Public Lands
They're not hiding what they're doing.
"Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf."
Aldo Leopold
This Week’s Take
The biggest development this week was Steve Pearce's BLM confirmation hearing, where his defining soundbite"I'm not so sure that I've changed" on selling public lands gave conservation groups exactly the ammunition they feared and hoped for. Meanwhile, Senator Mike Lee launched the first-ever CRA attack on a national monument management plan at Grand Staircase-Escalante, the Cook Inlet offshore lease sale approached with a new legal challenge, and the Senate's expected vote on the Boundary Waters mineral withdrawal appeared to stall without confirmation it occurred. New polling shows the American West isn't buying what Washington is selling. It was a big week. Pay attention.
The State of Public Lands, Energy, and Minerals
1. The Man Who Would Run Your Public Lands Said “I’m Not Sure I’ve Changed”
Steve Pearce, Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency that manages 245 million acres of public land, faced two hours of Senate questioning on February 25. When confronted with a 2012 letter he co-signed calling for the sale of federal land and stating “most of it we do not even need,” Pearce replied: “I am not so sure that I’ve changed” then argued that federal law prevents him from conducting large-scale land sales on his own. He also claimed ignorance on major active policy questions, including the Interior Secretary’s directive requiring personal sign-off before any solar or wind project can advance on federal land.
Why this matters: The Bureau of Land Management director controls every lease sale, permit, and monument review across nearly a quarter of America’s land. This nominee walked into his job interview unable to disavow selling it.
2. Grand Staircase-Escalante Faces an Unprecedented Legal Assault
Senator Mike Lee of Utah used the Congressional Review Act this week to target Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument’s management plan, the first time in United States history this legislative tool has been aimed at a national monument. The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to nullify federal rules or plans with a simple majority vote, and if this resolution passes, the Bureau of Land Management would be permanently barred from issuing a substantially similar plan potentially opening roughly 700,000 acres to coal mining and oil and gas leasing. Six tribal nations and a majority of Utah voters, including most Republicans, oppose the move.
Why this matters: The Congressional Review Act is a one-way door. Once used to kill a management plan, no future administration can bring back anything substantially similar this isn’t a pause, it’s a permanent lock.
3. The Boundary Waters Vote: Expected, But Still Unconfirmed
Congress was widely expected this week to vote on a resolution to cancel the 20-year mineral withdrawal protecting roughly 225,000 acres of Superior National Forest next to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota from copper-nickel sulfide mining. The resolution needs only a simple 51-vote Senate majority, no extended debate required, and hundreds of Minnesotans rallied at the State Capitol on February 25 as the vote loomed. As of March 3, no confirmed Senate action had occurred. This vote could arrive with very little notice.
Why this matters: If this resolution passes and is signed, the mineral protection is canceled permanently and no future administration can reinstate it clearing the way for copper-nickel sulfide mining upstream from over a million acres of clean water wilderness. That type of mining has never been done anywhere in the world without polluting nearby water.
4. The Arctic Is Going Up for Auction. A New Legal Fight Is Here.
The Bureau of Land Management is accepting bids through March 16 on a massive oil and gas lease sale in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. Roughly 5.5 million acres the size of New Jersey, including some of the most ecologically sensitive habitat in the entire Arctic. The sale is the first of five mandated by last year’s federal budget law, but conservation groups argue it is far more destructive than what the law actually requires, since the Interior Department had authority to protect the most sensitive areas and chose not to use it. Lawsuits from Earthjustice and The Wilderness Society are active in federal court, and a new legal challenge filed February 26 alleges the government failed to evaluate impacts to Arctic wildlife before proceeding.
Why this matters: The National Petroleum Reserve is the largest piece of undisturbed public land in the United States. Once it is leased and developed, the word undisturbed is gone. Permanently.
5. More Acres. More Sales. More Deadlines Passing Quietly.
The Bureau of Land Management announced a new oil and gas lease sale for April 28 offering 23 parcels totaling 8,993 acres in North and South Dakota, with public comment open through March 23. Public protest windows for the March 31 lease sales in Colorado (52,703 acres), Utah (68,632 acres), and Nevada (19,957 acres) all closed March 2 and separate comment periods on an additional 160,628 acres in Colorado close March 13, and another 20,600 acres in Nevada close March 11. These sales happen on a schedule, and the clock runs whether anyone is watching or not.
Why this matters: Every acre leased is locked into fossil fuel development for decades. Public comment windows are often the last tool citizens have to push back miss the window, and the decision is already made.
Next step, vote in November.
6. The People Paid to Protect Public Lands Are Disappearing
No major new layoffs hit federal land management agencies this week, but the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s independent watchdog, released a report on February 24 documenting roughly 134,000 federal employee separations in just the first half of 2025, with an additional 144,000 departing through the administration’s voluntary resignation program by year’s end. The National Parks Conservation Association separately documented a 24% decline in the National Park Service’s permanent workforce since January 2025. The Forest Service opened a rare 10-day hiring window this week for roughly 2,000 seasonal workers its first significant hiring since the mass firings of February 2025.
Why this matters: Land doesn’t manage itself. Outdoor recreation contributes $1.1 trillion annually to the United States economy and supports 5 million jobs and every ranger station that closes and every trail that goes unmaintained is a cost that falls directly on the communities built around these places.
Energy News
7. The Government Is Betting $171 Million on Geothermal. Both Parties Are On Board.
On February 25, the Department of Energy announced $171.5 million in funding for next-generation geothermal energy, the largest single federal investment in the sector’s history. The money targets enhanced geothermal systems, or EGS, a technology that uses the same deep drilling and rock-fracturing techniques developed by the oil and gas industry to tap into the Earth’s heat virtually anywhere (not just near volcanoes or hot springs). The Department of Energy’s own analysis estimates the U.S. has the potential for at least 300 gigawatts of reliable geothermal power on the grid by 2050 that’s 75 times current capacity. Because the technology uses familiar oil-and-gas equipment and employs similar workers, it’s one of the few clean energy sources with genuine bipartisan backing and the Trump administration has kept its tax credits intact while stripping them from wind and solar.
Why this matters for public lands: Enhanced geothermal can be developed on already-disturbed land and existing drilling infrastructure keeping the case for wild land sacrifice much harder to make. This is the kind of energy development worth watching closely.
8. Clean Energy Is Growing Whether Washington Wants It To or Not.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration,Co ngress’s independent energy data agency, projects that American power plant developers plan to add 86 gigawatts of new generating capacity to the grid in 2026, with solar accounting for 51%, battery storage 28%, and wind 14%. Natural gas comes in at just 7%. During the Trump administration’s first year, renewable energy capacity grew by roughly 55,800 megawatts, while fossil fuels and nuclear combined added fewer than 800. The policy headwinds are real wind subsidies are being phased out, offshore wind is frozen, and solar tax credits face uncertainty. The market apparently didn’t get the memo.
Why this matters: The energy transition isn’t waiting for permission. The question now is whether the infrastructure (transmission lines, grid upgrades, permitting) can keep up with the build-out, or whether bottlenecks hand fossil fuels a second life they haven’t earned.
Other Stories Worth Flagging
Former top land managers from both parties call for a rethink. Biden-era Bureau of Land Management Director Tracy Stone-Manning and George W. Bush-era Deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett co-authored a piece in High Country News this week calling for a bipartisan overhaul of how the federal government manages public land. Arguing the laws governing these lands were written for a different century and need to catch up with climate change, mass recreation, and the energy transition.
Fifteen Democratic-led states walked away from their Arctic Refuge lawsuit. Washington State and 14 others filed notice on February 11 abandoning a six-year-old lawsuit challenging oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, citing new congressional and administration actions that require a different legal strategy. They indicated they are evaluating support for Alaska Native organizations’ litigation instead.
Senator Lee is coming back for more. Senator Mike Lee of Utah has announced plans to reintroduce a public lands sell-off amendment to the federal budget reconciliation package, the same type of proposal his own Republican colleagues killed last fall under constituent pressure.
The Wilderness Society is suing for transparency. A Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeks records from a joint Interior-Housing and Urban Development task force formed in March 2025 that was reportedly targeting public lands for private sale and development. The Bureau of Land Management claimed it had “no responsive records” despite publicly acknowledging its role in the task force.
A highway through a national conservation area is being challenged in court. Six conservation groups sued in early February to block the Northern Corridor Highway project. A road approved by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to cut through Red Cliffs National Conservation Area in Utah, home to the threatened Mojave desert tortoise. The lawsuit alleges violations of both the Endangered Species Act and federal environmental review requirements.
Thank you for reading! I highlight threats to public lands and the energy industry’s impact. I believe clean energy is the future, and ALL energy projects should prioritize private land first to keep wild places wild. When energy extraction is needed on public lands all projects must restore the land after extraction. Public lands are unique and once lost, they’re gone forever.
Sources:
Bureau of Land Management - Press Release
Big Beautiful Cook Inlet (BBC1) Oil and Gas Lease Sale
BLM - BLM announces March 2026 sale of oil and gas leases in Nevada