6/2/21

Eco-warrior will take on eco-terrorists

In 1993 Missoula's Tracy Stone-Manning was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony in a 1989 tree spiking incident in Idaho's Clearwater National Forest. 

Eco-warrior Stone-Manning became an aide to Senator Jon Tester (D-MT), was chief of staff for Montana Governor Steve Bullock, ran the state’s Department of Environmental Quality and as the director of the Clark Fork Coalition she guided dam removal and river cleanup. She's currently the National Wildlife Federation’s senior adviser for conservation policy who blasted the Trump Organization's acting director of the Bureau of Land Management for enabling the marauding Bundy clan to abuse public lands.

Today, Stone-Manning is President Joe Biden's choice to lead the BLM and if confirmed she will serve under Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. In 2019 Democratic then-New Mexico Representative Haaland led a House subcommittee hearing on anti-government extremism emphasizing that the violent ideologies expressed by the Bundys were spurred by white elected Republicans in the Mountain West. Now, at the direction of Sec. Haaland the BLM has even hired a security specialist to outline strategies to defend federal employees and public property against welfare ranchers and white supremacists.

In a statement Tester said Stone-Manning is a “tireless public lands champion with a lifetime of experience." She has been an outspoken opponent of moving the BLM headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado.
Qualified? There is absolutely no question. (She’s far more directly qualified to lead BLM than was Zinke to take over Interior.) Every stop in Stone-Manning’s remarkable career has applicability to this job. So here’s the question: Will Republican Steve Daines subvert his political and policy differences with Stone-Manning and get behind an unassailably qualified Montana candidate? Or will he continue to play the shrill, strident partisan role he has taken on this session, ever since fund-raising off spurious allegations that Democrats were trying to “steal the election?” Stone-Manning is far more qualified than the last BLM leader Daines supported — William Perry Pendley, the lawyer who advocated selling off federal lands. Her confirmation would go far toward restoring professionalism to a politicized agency, and would clearly be both an honor and an advantage for Montana. [Lee Newspapers of Montana]
Eco-terrorist Ammon Bundy has announced he will run in the Republican primary in a bid to unseat Idaho Governor Brad Little. 

Learn more about that at Jefferson Public Radio.

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