On Tuesday, the Cache County Council approved a resolution opposing the candidacy of controversial Biden administration nominee Tracy Stone-Manning to serve as director of the Bureau of Land Management,.
CACHE COUNTY – During a special meeting Tuesday, the members of the Cache County Council unanimously passed a resolution opposing President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Bureau of Land Management.
That resolution charged that Tracy Stone-Manning is unfit to head that federal agency due to her previous ties to eco-terrorist organizations and radical views regarding commercial use of public lands.
Resolution 2021-17 was introduced by Cache County Council chair Gina Worthen. Its text was drafted by members of the Utah State Association of County Councils and Commissions (USACCC).
The Utah Association of Counties urged the leaders of every county in the state to pass similar resolutions and forward them to Utah’s Republican senators Mike Lee and Mitt Romney.
The resolution was strongly supported by council members David L. Erickson and council co-chair Barbara Y. Tidwell.
“I’ve been down in Kanab to talk to people who worked in lumber yards there and had family members injured by exploding saws due to tree spikes,” Erickson said. “Then (lumber companies) had to go to magnetic devices and metal detectors to scan every tree that was cut down. It was amazing what they had to go through because of these eco-terrorist plots.”
“I totally agree with David that we need to pass this resolution,” Tidwell added, explaining that her family worked in the lumber industry. “I don’t understand why someone would think it was okay to do something (like tree-spiking) and then be almost flippant about the possibility of someone being killed when sawing down those trees.”
Worthen also provided council members with a copy of a July 14 letter by Michael W. Merkley, a former criminal investigator for the U.S. Forest Service, to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), the chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. That letter implicated Stone-Manning in a tree-spiking conspiracy by Earth First radicals in Idaho’s Clearwater National Forest in the late 1980s.
During recent confirmation hearings in the Senate, Ms. Stone-Manning has portrayed herself as a heroine in the investigation and prosecution of those eco-terrorists in the early 1990s.
“Contrary to many stories in the news, Ms. Stone-Manning was not an innocent bystander, nor was she a victim in this case,” Merkley countered. “She most certainly was not a hero … It was clear to those of us familiar with the activities of (Earth First) that she was not only an active participant but also wielded significant influence among its members.”
Stone-Manning is currently employed as a conservation policy advisor at the National Wildlife Federation, a non-profit environmental group. Her professional experience includes serving as a staff member on conservation issues for Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, also a Democrat.
The text of the USACCC resolution charges that Stone-Manning’s association with radical environmental groups dates back four decades. It also alleges that she was granted immunity from prosecution for testifying against her co-conspirators in a tree-spiking plot to sabotage logging operations in Idaho and lied during recent confirmation testimony that she had never been the subject of a federal investigation.
The resolution also charges that Stone-Manning is on-record as opposing livestock grazing on public land; urging that human dwellings be abandoned to wildfires; and advocating for two-child-only population controls to protect the environment.
In the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Land Management oversees commercial use of nearly 250 million acres of public land, including grazing, logging and drilling operations. The BLM also controls mineral rights on 700 million acres, balancing the interests of the fossil fuel industry against those of recreationists and environmentalists.