The Biden administration is standing by the president’s nominee for the Bureau of Land Management despite her past link to an “ecoterrorism” investigation and views on population growth, Fox News reported on Monday.
“Tracy Stone-Manning is a dedicated public servant who has years of experience and a proven track record of finding solutions and common ground when it comes to our public lands and waters,” a White House official told Fox. “She is exceptionally qualified to be the next Director of the Bureau of Land Management.”
Stone-Manning, an environmental adviser who has worked in the office of Senator Jon Tester (D., Mont.), testified before a grand jury in 1989 and at a criminal trial in 1993. In exchange for immunity, Stone-Manning testified that she sent an anonymous letter to the U.S. Forest Service on behalf of her former roommate, warning that 500 pounds of “spikes measuring 8 to 10 inches in length” had been jammed in trees in an Idaho forest.
“Tree-spiking” is intended to prevent logging by ensuring damage to saws and by reducing the commercial value of the resulting lumber, and is considered to be a form of “eco-terrorism.”
Contemporary news reports do not prove that Stone-Manning was the target of a federal investigation. However, Senator John Barrasso (R., Wyo.) has suggested that Stone-Manning lied to the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee by testifying that she was never the target of such an investigation.
“Tracy Stone-Manning collaborated with eco-terrorists who had booby trapped trees with metal spikes,” Barrasso said on Monday. “She mailed the threatening letter for them and she was part of the cover up. She did not cooperate with investigators until she was caught.”
Stone-Manning also argued in her graduate thesis that Americans should have two children or fewer in order to protect the environment.
“The origin of our abuses is us. If there were fewer of us, we would have less impact,” Stone-Manning wrote. “We must consume less, and more importantly, we must breed fewer consuming humans.”