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NEW MEXICO FEDERAL LANDS NEWS by Frank Dubois
Hiking, Cycling, or Spiking?
he United States Senate has confirmed Tracy Stone-Manning as the Director of the Bureau of Land Management. The nomination was highly controversial, and it took two votes for confirmation: one to invoke cloture (end debate) and the other to approve the appointment. Let’s take a p e ek at what o ccurre d in the Senate chambers. Leading the opposition was Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo) who spoke on the Senate floor and laid out his reasons for opposing Stone-Manning.
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Barrasso began with the statement that the Democrats were bringing forward, “a nominee who collaborated with ecoterrorists, lied to the U.S. Senate, wrote in favor of population control as a problem related to the climate, and promoted the idea that homes built in the forest should be left to burn.” Barrasso continued: “Ms. Stone-Manning lied to the Senate… this year about her past association with an ecoterrorist cell that hammered hundreds and hundreds of metal spikes–about 500 pounds of metal spikes–into trees in Idaho’s Clearwater National Forest. If these metal spikes are struck by a logger’s saw, the injuries to the logger can be fatal. And it is not just loggers who use saws; it is firefighters as well… Ms. Stone-Manning anonymously sent a threatening letter to the U.S. Forest Service on behalf of the ecoterrorists, of which she was one of the ring leaders, and then spent years covering up their crimes, as well as her own.” Barrasso also said; “And 1 year ago–not when she was a graduate student a number of decades ago, but 1 year ago–she tweeted an article that her husband had written, calling for homes built in the forest, allowing them to burn during fires. She called the article a ‘clarion call.’ That is not part of the responsibilities and is the exact opposite of what we should expect from the head of the Bureau of Land Management.” Barrasso concluded by saying she was “a dangerous choice” and urging the Senate to reject the nomination. Coming to Stone-Manning’s defense was Senator Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia. This was key to the eventual majority vote in favor of her nomination. Manchin is not always in lock-step with Biden’s agenda and has opposed some of his other nominations. Add that he is chair of the Senate Committee with jurisdiction, and his support turned the tide in favor of Stone-Manning. Manchin began by saying he supported Stone-Manning, “after giving very, very, very careful consideration to this serious– and I mean serious–allegations that many of our colleagues have leveled against her. If there were any truth–a shred of truth– or evidence to support the charges, I wouldn’t be standing here; I couldn’t support her. But I have found no such evidence, and I have looked.” Manchin continued: “A jury heard the evidence in the
