Thanks to a “discharge” from Senate Democrats, the nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning (pictured at left) advanced from a deadlocked Senate Energy Committee and set up a pending floor vote that could come at any time.
As the nominee awaits that vote, pro-life activist Ann Scheidler of Pro-Life Action League says Stone-Manning not only deserves to be defeated for her alleged ties to eco-terrorism but also for her claim in the 1990s that large families -- parents raising more than two children --- were harming the grizzly bear population in the Pacific Northwest.
In a 1990s magazine essay, she said the public has “annexed too much space” and said the “weapon of overpopulation” had become a weapon against humans.
“We must consume less, and more importantly, we must breed fewer consuming humans,” she wrote.
The irony of Stone-Manning leading the BLM is that she would oversee a federal agency that regulates tens of millions of public acres, mostly in the West, that are used for logging, energy drilling, and livestock grazing --- uses that alarm and anger radical activists including the nominee herself.
“The children born today will figure out cures for diseases and things that will protect the environment,” counters Scheidler, “and will invent new things and take care of other people.”
In her college thesis at the University of Montana, Stone-Manning created environmental-themed public service announcements to advocate for fewer children, too.
“Can you find the environmental hazard in this photo?” one of the ads, featuring a toddler, asks.
The stark warning about an overpopulated planet dates back to the 1970s, and with it warnings about out-of-control pollution and dwindling food supplies, and Scheidler says the solution for that non-existent problem is always fewer children.
“There’s no resource on earth,” she says, “better than children."
Republicans on the Senate Energy Committee savaged Stone-Manning for aiding radical activists who spiked trees in a national forest, a dangerous tactic that is used to stop logging. On behalf of one of the activists, she sent an anonymous letter in 1989 to federal officers warning about the tree spikes. She later testified against the activists, who were sentenced to prison, after being promised prosecutorial immunity.
The BLM nominee most recently worked for the National Wildlife Federation and, before that, served as chief of staff for Montana's governor, Steve Bullock. She also oversaw the Montana Dept. of Environmental Quality.
