This piece was originally published by AZ Central.
Arizonans and rural communities across the West deserve a serious leader at the helm of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM): someone who understands the importance of a multiple-use approach to managing our public lands and responsibly utilizing our natural resources.
Unfortunately, President Biden’s nominee, Tracy Stone-Manning, espouses no such level-headedness.
In fact, she has collaborated with radical eco-terrorists hellbent on destroying the livelihoods of rural Americans, defended outrageous population control arguments that threaten our way of life, and demonstrated hostility towards the statutory mandate of multiple use on our public lands.
Stone-Manning is linked to a radical environmental group, Earth First!, and a tree-spiking incident in Idaho’s Clearwater National Forest. Stone-Manning admitted to retyping a letter in 1989 laced with profanity – using a rented typewriter to conceal detection – and mailing it to the U.S. Forest Service to threaten a planned timber logging sale.
Despite her trying to downplay her involvement to both a federal court judge and the U.S. Senate, the shocking details about the event and her controversial past continue to come to light.
Former Forest Service Special Agent Michael Merkley, the lead agent on the tree-spiking case, wrote to members of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee informing them that Stone-Manning was not only “an active member of the original group that planned the spiking to the Post Office Timber Sale Trees,” but that she was “vulgar, antagonistic, and extremely anti-government,” only choosing to cooperate after she was informed that she could face charges if she did not comply with the orders of a federal grand jury.
Perhaps just as shocking as being involved in radical environmental organizations, Stone-Manning has written of the need for population control on numerous occasions. In 1991, she wrote an essay published in High Country News arguing that we need to “wage war on overpopulation” to protect grizzly bears while claiming that humans “have annexed too much space.”
In her graduate thesis, Stone-Manning made the argument that America should follow a policy deployed by the Chinese Communist Party: placing limits on the number of children people can have. In addition to referring to children as an “environmental hazard,” she also contended that grazing on public lands is “destroying the West” rather than recognizing the benefits that grazing provides, including increased biodiversity, habitat restoration and wildfire mitigation.
We are extremely concerned by Stone-Manning’s nomination to lead the Bureau, but we are not alone.
President Obama’s own BLM Director Bob Abbey said in an interview with States Newsroom, “To put someone in that position that has this type of resume will just bring needless controversy that is not good for the agency or for the public lands.”
Another former BLM director, Jim Caswell, told E&E News, “If she’s confirmed, it’s just going to be impossible … It’s a detriment to the employees. The folks that she’d need to deal with out here in the West, out here in the communities, the door will close. It’s just going to get really bad.”
BLM’s mission is to sustain the health, diversity and productivity of public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.
Stone-Manning does not exemplify the characteristics we need to run a large agency that has a mission to create productive public lands for today and the future. Her history, policy positions and associates have a different mission in mind to lock up and hold hostage the public lands that so many of Arizona’s rural communities rely on.
The U.S. Senate has an opportunity to ensure an extremist like Tracy Stone-Manning is not at the helm of an agency as important as the Bureau of Land Management.
Rural communities deserve a BLM leader they can trust to balance and represent their interests throughout a diverse state like Arizona. Tracy Stone-Manning is not that person, and we strongly urge the Senate to reject this extreme and dangerous nominee.
Debbie Lesko represents Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and is a Member of the Congressional Western Caucus. Steve Pierce, a former lawmaker who served in the Arizona House and as Senate president, is president of the Arizona Farm and Ranch Group.
