The Senate voted on Thursday to confirm President Joe Biden’s controversial nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Tracy Stone-Manning, in a 50–45 vote along party lines.
Stone-Manning’s affiliation with ecoterrorists and her role in a tree spiking plot from three decades ago came to light in June during her nomination process, resulting in a wave of objections to her nomination to lead the BLM, the agency overseeing vast swaths of federal land in mostly western states.
In addition to zero support from congressional Republicans, several counties in the West, national and state logger organizations, the Dallas Safari Club and Houston Safari Club, a former Obama administration BLM director, and a former Trump administration acting BLM director all spoke out against Stone-Manning’s nomination as the process played out.
Stone-Manning was a member of the environmental extremist group Earth First! while she was a graduate student 30 years ago at the University of Montana in Missoula, a hub for environmental activism in the ’80s and ’90s. The FBI identified the group as one of multiple radical groups that posed a domestic terrorist threat to the U.S.
After his 1996 arrest, Ted Kaczynski, commonly known as the Unabomber, praised the Earth First! journal and described himself as an “Earth Firster satellite.” Kaczynski’s cabin was located in Lincoln, Montana, under two hours from Missoula, and he said he would at times venture to the University of Montana to use the library there.
During her time at the University of Montana, the now-confirmed nominee became involved in a tree spiking operation. As Breitbart News reported, in 1989:
What the hell do they do? Sounds like a bullshit job doing nothing.