Republican senators from the West say Tracy Stone-Manning is disqualified from serving as director of the Bureau of Land Management because of her involvement in a logging sabotage episode in 1989. Idaho Sen. James Risch said on Wednesday that Stone-Manning, a senior adviser with the National Wildlife Federation who served as chief of staff to former Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, had “colluded with eco-terrorists.”
A part of the Interior Department, the BLM oversees 1 of every 10 acres in the United States, mainly in the West, and approximately 30 percent of the nation’s minerals. In 2020, the Trump administration moved the agency’s headquarters from Washington to Grand Junction, Colorado. Nearly 300 employees left the BLM rather than move.
In 1989, Stone-Manning, then 23, wrote a letter to the Forest Service warning that environmental activists had hammered spikes into trees in the Clearwater National Forest in Idaho to prevent logging. She eventually testified in court under a grant of immunity in a case that led to the conviction of two friends. She said she wrote the letter because “I didn’t want anyone getting hurt.” Stone-Manning had to explain her involvement to Montana legislators years later when she was nominated to run the state’s environment agency, reported the Associated Press.
Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso said at a Senate confirmation hearing this month that Stone-Manning “does not fit the bill” to lead the agency. “She has expressed views that threaten the livelihoods of energy producers, ranchers, farmers, loggers, and others with a stake in the responsible use of our natural resources.” He later said she was not qualified because of collaboration with “extreme environmental activists.”