Senate confirms Biden’s pick for Bureau of Land Management : NPR

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The country’s next chief of U.S. general public lands is Montana environmental chief Tracy Stone-Manning. The U.S. Senate narrowly verified her to be the following director of the Bureau of Land Administration right after a bitter nomination discussion. The company controls who will get to do what on about a tenth of all the land in the U.S., everything from oil and fuel drilling and wind farms to wildfire avoidance. Here’s NPR’s Kirk Siegler.

KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: Tracy Stone-Manning is most lately a coverage adviser at the National Wildlife Federation. That capped two decades doing the job mainly in the public sector as an aide to Democrats and as Montana’s leading environmental regulator. She made a status as a bipartisan dealmaker on contentious community lands battles. But Senate Republicans have instead focused on her transient involvement with the radical Earth 1st! movement even though a grad pupil at the College of Montana in the 1980s.

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JOHN BARRASSO: She is the incorrect selection for this job.

SIEGLER: Republicans like Wyoming Senator John Barrasso on the Senate ground yesterday once more termed Stone-Manning an eco-terrorist collaborator. They say she’ll lack trustworthiness foremost the sprawling agency. The bureau hasn’t had a Senate-verified director since the Obama administration.

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BARRASSO: Tracy Stone-Manning is a risky choice to be place in demand of America’s public lands. And each and every single senator who votes to verify her will be held personally accountable for that vote.

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JON TESTER: Damn correct. Hold me accountable for Tracy Stone-Manning.

SIEGLER: Montana Democrat Jon Tester, who Stone-Manning the moment labored for, he has stated since the bureau only had an performing director below President Trump, Senate Democrats in no way acquired to query him about at the time contacting for providing off U.S. public lands and his sympathies for ranchers who led armed rebellions in opposition to federal land administrators.

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TESTER: I have worked with her. I know what she does. I know she can get the work carried out. She can provide people today alongside one another of all political ilks.

SIEGLER: Stone-Manning has retained a lower profile given that her nomination very last spring, but specifically ladies in the conservation movement like Kathy Hadley have rallied to her defense.

KATHY HADLEY: She’s bought a document – a 30-12 months record of remaining a great community servant. So why go immediately after her so challenging? And, you know, the most important distinguishing attribute is she’s a lady.

SIEGLER: Stone-Manning will be only the 2nd female to permanently direct the lands agency due to the fact it was recognized in 1946. Kirk Siegler, NPR News.

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