Even Sen. Lisa Murkowski would not vote for the 2021 confirmation of Tracy Stone-Manning, who had been with EarthFirst! and was tied to a tree-spiking terrorism incident decades before President Joe Biden brought her on as the director of the Bureau of Land Management.
But she was confirmed by the Democrats in the Senate anyway, and has been in charge of the agency for four years, converting it from a multi-use land agency to one dedicated to complete preservation of land, including the 70 million acres the agency owns and controls in Alaska.
Now that the Biden Administration is coming to an end, Stone-Manning is heading back to the environmental non-governmental organization industry, also known as ENGOs.
She’ll be taking over the leadership of The Wilderness Society, which opposes and litigates against all oil and gas leases on Alaska’s North Slope, against all mining, and against all forestry.
President Biden nominated Stone-Manning to direct the BLM in 2021, taking over from Acting Director William Perry Pendley, who served under the Trump Administration.
While she was being confirmed, her past actions with EarthFirst! came to light. Republicans argued against her due to her work as an environmentalist who supported the driving of spikes into trees in order to discourage logging, knowing the spikes would do deadly harm to loggers working in the forest, she was a poor choice. Stone-Manning is on record saying she “retyped” a letter detailing the attacks and sent the letter anonymously to the U.S. Forest Service so that logging would be halted.
Stone-Manning had also been a senior advisor at the National Wildlife Federation in Montana, and was chief of staff to Democrat Gov. Steve Bullock. She was a senior aide to Democrat U.S. Sen. John Tester.
