Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On Advancing President Biden’s Nominee To Lead The Bureau Of Land Management, Tracy Stone-Manning

Washington, D.C. –  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor, urging his colleagues in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee to support the nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning to lead the Bureau of Land Management. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Today in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, President Biden’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management, Tracy Stone-Manning, will receive a vote to advance her nomination to the Senate floor.

While it sometimes flies under the radar, the Bureau of Land Management is responsible for overseeing nearly 250 million acres of public lands and 700 million acres of mineral rights—a vast tract of the United States of America. No agency is more important to the maintenance of public lands for public use. The Bureau of Land Management will play a huge role in the fight against climate change as well.

Over the past four years under Donald Trump, the agency abandoned its mission, shrunk public lands, targeted our national monuments, and opened up those beautiful landscapes for corporate industrial development. In short, the next leader of the Bureau of Land Management has a tall order in restoring and protecting America’s public lands.

Ms. Stone-Manning is exceedingly qualified to take on this important job. After serving on Sen. Tester’s and Gov. Bullock’s staff, she went on to lead the environmental agency in Montana, where she was respected not only by conservationists, but by ranchers and fossil-fuel interests as well. She developed a reputation as an honest broker—someone who was firm in their principles but always willing to try and build consensus.

And yet, the members of the Republican minority on the Committee are trying to turn this consensus-driven, well-respected nominee into another partisan flashpoint—dredging up a letter she forwarded while in graduate school and claiming it was evidence that she is “an eco-terrorist.”

The claim is just as hysterical as it sounds.

Ms. Stone-Manning has the full support of the Chair of the Committee, the Senator from West Virginia, Mr. Tester, the Senator from Montana, and from me.

We need someone like Ms. Stone-Manning to manage our public lands: a staunch advocate for conservation but also an honest broker, someone who will repair the damage of the last four years and be a faithful steward of America’s national treasures. Someone who understands that conservation policy has a critical role to play in the fight against climate change.

Ms. Stone-Manning has all of those qualities, and I look forward to moving her nomination to the Senate floor.

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