If a nominee to oversee one-eighth of the nation’s landmass had a history of collaborations in eco-terrorism over three decades ago, called for the burning of houses because they were built in a national forest, and actually wrote an essay saying “we should wage war on overpopulation” as Americans were “breeding our weapons” in the war on the grizzly bear, somehow Congress should ask the president for a new nominee.

However, despite bipartisan opposition against President Biden's nominee to serve as director of the Bureau of Land Management, Tracy Stone-Manning was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 50-45 at the start of October. Leading up to the vote, land management, agriculture, conservation and hunting groups - as well as former Obama administration officials - rescinded their support over Stone-Manning's ties to extreme eco-terrorism and urged the U.S. Senate to reject her nomination. 

The BLM has been without Senate-confirmed leadership for multiple years, so the confirmation is an important step for an agency that manages hundreds of millions of acres across the West, according to a statement from the Public Lands Council and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. 

“Public lands ranchers are ready to get to work with Director Stone-Manning, especially because the mission of the BLM is critical to the future of these Western communities,” says NCBA Executive Director of Natural Resources and PLC Executive Director Kaitlynn Glover. “The BLM is an important partner to ranchers across the West, and it is our expectation that Director Stone-Manning uphold the law, support multiple use management, and recognize the important role ranchers play in managing and conserving these large landscapes.”

Let's see if that optimism brings good fruit. We will see if the concerns expressed during the vetting process pose a threat to rural America.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member John Barrasso, R-Wyo., detailed ahead of the vote that Stone-Manning “colluded with eco-terrorists” in a case regarding hammering hundreds of metal spikes into trees in a national forest in Idaho.

Barrasso goes on to say, “In September of 2020 – one year ago – she tweeted an article written by her husband that calls for homes in forests to be left to burn during wildfires. Her husband wrote: ‘There’s a rude and satisfying justice in burning down the house of someone who builds in the forest.’”

Barrasso shared that a year ago, as wildfires burned across the country, she actually endorsed her husband’s views on letting the houses burn. In a tweet, she called her husband’s writing a “clarion call.”

“As the director of the Bureau of Land Management, Tracy Stone-Manning would be in charge of firefighting operations on public lands. She is comfortable leaving the houses of our constituents to burn because they built their homes in the forest,” Barrasso says. 

Senate Democrats brushed the claims aside. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin, D-W.V., says he was unable to find any “credible evidence in the exhaustive trial record of the tree spiking case that supports the allegations levied against Stone-Manning.”

Manchin explains, “What I find instead, in the committee’s hearing record on her nomination, is compelling evidence that Ms. Stone-Manning has built a solid reputation over the past three decades as a dedicated public servant and as a problem solver and as a consensus builder.”

Manchin adds she faithfully served Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., for five years in positions of “trust and responsibility” on Tester’s staff. And she went on to serve Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana, for two years as the director of Montana’s Department Environmental Quality and two more as Bullock’s chief of staff.

Bipartisan concerns

Ahead of the vote, it wasn’t just Republicans raising red flags on her nomination. Former Obama administration Director of the Bureau of Land Management Bob Abbey says, “BLM needs a really strong leader. 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.”

Oregon Farm Bureau Executive Vice President Dave Dillon, adds, "We cannot support a nominee who condones and will not adequately reject groups that use violence and threats of harm to intimidate and advance their own agenda. We join the growing chorus of Americans from both parties in asking the president to withdraw this nomination." 

Congressional Western Caucus Chairman Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., says he’s been pleading with his Senate colleagues for months to ask for another nominee. “Let me be clear: A vote for Tracy Stone-Manning is a vote against our farmers and ranchers, our public lands users and our rural communities throughout the West.”

In a final plea ahead of the vote, Barrasso says there are many qualified democrats who could run the Bureau of Land Management and do a fine job.

“We should reject this nomination and the president can nominate someone else, he says. “It is astonishing to me to see democrats digging in to defend a proven liar, eco-terrorist collaborator, who still holds very dangerous and threatening beliefs.” 

Moving headquarters

To go along with the troubling concerns of a new director at BLM, in mid-September, the Department of the Interior announced they would relocate BLM headquarters from Grand Junction, Colo., to Washington, D.C. The headquarters were formally established in Grand Junction just over a year prior in August 2020.

Newhouse notes: “Putting management of lands in the West back into the hands of D.C. bureaucrats will only result in less effective management, loss of economic activity and even greater mistrust of the federal government.”

Of the 245 million acres managed by BLM, 99% of the land is located in the West. The headquarters relocation was another attempt under the Trump administration to “drain the swamp” and allow for more decision-making done near those impacted most similar to the move of the Economic Research Service to Kansas City.

“The headquarters’ move to Grand Junction garnered strong bipartisan support in the House, the Senate, the state of Colorado and the entire West,” says Newhouse. “This ridiculous notion of having dual headquarters is a display of the worst kind of D.C. theatrics that will only lend to further uncertainty about BLM's land management decisions. The Biden administration’s betrayal of rural America will not be forgotten.”

In Biden's first days of office, Colorado U.S. Democrat Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper reiterated their longstanding, consistent support for a fully functioning BLM headquarters in Grand Junction. In a letter to President Joe Biden on Jan. 23, the senators touted the benefits of a fully-fledged headquarters on the Western Slope.

“It simply makes sense that the public servants who manage our public lands should live among the natural resources they oversee. When combined with sufficient resources, experienced leadership and proper priorities, such a move could improve agency decision making,” the two Democrat senators noted.

Following the announcement of the move, Bennet notes, “While I am disappointed that the national headquarters will be in Washington, I believe establishing and growing a permanent BLM Western Headquarters in Grand Junction should be a very positive development." Bennet says in the coming months, he will hold the administration accountable to ensure that the BLM Western Headquarters is "permanent, fully staffed and informed by the voices of the Rocky Mountain West — after the last administration failed to deliver on that promise.”