Tracy Stone-Manning is dangerous for Central Washington and Rural America

Tracy Stone-Manning is an unacceptable nominee to serve as Director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and President Biden’s nomination of her highlights just how out of touch he is with rural America.

The Bureau of Land Management has an enormous impact on the lives and livelihoods of people throughout the Pacific Northwest. With 16.1 million acres of BLM land in our region, we deserve a Director who understands and appreciates the complex nature of public land management and the priorities of Central Washington.

Ms. Stone-Manning is the last person who should be leading this agency. With her ties to ecoterrorism and blatant disregard for the lives of rural Americans, or any Americans for that matter, her nomination sends a distressing signal to the rural communities that the Biden Administration is more interested in appeasing the far-left than the well-being of their families and businesses.

Tracy Stone-Manning was involved in a tree spiking incident in 1989. Tree spiking is an atrocious practice that involves hammering a metal rod into a tree trunk in order to prevent logging. A metal saw blade hitting an embedded spike could break or shatter, leading to injury or even death to nearby loggers. Its tactics are to intentionally harm log workers or coerce them through fear of physical harm. What’s worse, instead of immediately alerting the authorities, she decided to help conceal the identities of the tree spikers. A retired federal law enforcement agent who investigated the 1989 tree spiking incident said her initial lack of cooperation with law enforcement set the investigation back by several years. This dangerous practice costs innocent lives and livelihoods, and anyone who subscribes to ecoterrorist acts like this is not suited to lead any federal agency, let alone one dedicated to public land management.

When this information came to light, however, the Biden Administration doubled down on her nomination, calling her “exceptionally qualified to be the next Director of the Bureau of Land Management.” Someone who commits acts of ecoterrorism is the furthest from being qualified to manage our public lands. Even former Obama administration BLM director Bob Abbey pulled his support, saying that, “she should withdraw her name from further consideration for the BLM director position.”

Recently, more information has come to light further proving how ill-fitted she is for this role. Stone-Manning argued in her graduate thesis that livestock grazing on public land is “destroying the West.” This could not be further from the truth. Public grazing is a vital part of the agricultural economy in Central Washington and has a number of science-based, environmental benefits, including increasing diversity of plant and animal species, reducing wildfire threat, and restoring wildlife habitats. If confirmed by the Senate to lead the BLM, Stone-Manning would control an agency that manages livestock grazing on 155 million acres of public lands.

Perhaps more disturbing than any of these revelations, however, is the topic of Tracy Stone-Manning’s graduate thesis: population control. For those of us who grew up in rural, farming communities, families are integral to our way of life. But to Ms. Stone-Manning, children are “environmental hazards.” It is deeply distressing that this Administration would seek to elevate someone whose beliefs are, frankly, anti-American.

The White House has admitted to the Associated Press that they knew of Stone-Manning’s past before they nominated her, so why did President Biden nominate someone who ‘collaborated with eco-terrorists’ to manage our federal lands? Or someone who believes we should institute a two-child policy to represent our country on a national scale?

President Biden must pull back Tracy Stone-Manning’s nomination immediately. We cannot condone, endorse, or vote for someone who’s been part of an ecoterrorist movement and holds extreme, radical beliefs.