Looking Back on Biden's Anti-Human Legacy of Land Management
After the Biden Administration's anti-stewardship approach, government agencies should return to serving the people who serve the land.
Under President Biden, the government’s approach to land and resource management has shifted from meeting the needs of the American people, to locking us off the land.
His agencies have been managed by radicals who view human beings as a blight on nature, not part of it. As Biden prepares to leave office, a look back at the past four years for America’s public lands and a few examples of our government’s ethos shift away from stewardship toward anti-production and abandonment.
DOI Chief Deb Haaland Prioritized Climate Change Agenda Over Energy Security & Jobs, Shut Down American Mining & Drilling While Funding Projects Overseas
The Department of the Interior, under Secretary Deb Haaland, has shut down numerous American mining and drilling projects even as the Biden administration funds similar projects abroad.
A March 2023 leak of internal memos exposed her office was prioritizing climate change objectives over energy security and jobs.
When Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) pressed Haaland on the scandal in a Senate hearing, she was dismissive, stating there were more than enough jobs in the American workforce.
“You’re telling me we’ve got too many jobs in the country?” Hawley responded. He called the response “extraordinary.”
“It reflects the mentality of your administration, which is, when it comes to blue-collar workers in this country, ‘You’re on your own. Good luck, good luck to you; we’ve got plenty. Just shut up and go get a job at McDonald’s. Whatever. Quit complaining about the loss of American industry,’” Hawley said.
“Jobs for blue-collar workers in this nation are valuable resources. The ability of America to have our own industry and not be dependent on China is a valuable resource.”
National Monuments Locked Americans Off the Land
In May, a White House press release bragged Biden was “on track to conserve more lands and waters than any President in history.” His administration has put millions of acres under protection, designating five new national monuments. Locals say this designation is misleading as often results in locking enormous acreage away from all human access.
“The Biden administration seems to have a problem differentiating between conservation and preservation,” Arizona rancher Casey Murph told UNWON after Biden’s million-acre national monument designation Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni.
“They seem to think that any human activity on land is only harmful to it, including livestock grazing, hunting, fishing and camping. The fact is, the land at this monument is extremely well preserved just as it is. It is almost exactly now as it was 150 years ago when American explorers first found it. The fact that it is rugged, remote, and environmentally harsh by the standards of most modern people has accomplished this. I fail to see how it can be preserved any better.
Activist-in-Chief Tracy Stone-Manning at Biden’s BLM
As his director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Biden appointed Tracy Stone-Manning, a former spokesperson for the eco-terrorist group Earth First.
U.S. Forest Service criminal investigator Michael Merkley says she was investigated in 1989 for her connection in a tree-spiking incident, in which Earth First members drove dangerous spikes into trees to threaten loggers, who could be injured or even killed if they tried to cut those trees down.
Stone-Manning allegedly wrote a letter to the U.S. Forest Service ending with: “You bastards go in there anyway and a lot of people could get hurt.” She claims she merely re-typed the letter, and that it was meant as a warning. During the ensuing federal investigation, Stone-Manning received immunity in exchange for her testimony against two Earth First members, both of whom were convicted.
John Barrasso, a retired Forest Service investigator in Wyoming, says she was “an active member of the original group that planned the spiking.” Merkley cited a witness who overheard a conversation “wherein Ms. Stone-Manning along with other co-conspirators planned the tree-spiking and discussed whether to use ceramic or metal spikes in the trees.”
It is shocking that Biden gave a woman connected with a plan to harm American workers power over their livelihoods.
Stone-Manning treated her role at the BLM as less resource manager than dictator. One of her first acts was to demand greater oversight of leases, and the right to pull contracts at will.
Non-Use Deemed a “Primary Purpose” for Land
Under Stone-Manning, a new BLM lease type allows ideologues to claim land not for use, but for disuse. By redefining non-use as a "primary purpose" under the Federal Register, the BLM seeks to offer "conservation leases" to ideological bidders. Public land has never been available to lease for abandonment.
This decision is a slap in the face for American ranchers, loggers, and energy workers. The government is signaling it sees ideal stewards as anti-human political activists, not people who live with and by nature.
Returning to Stewardship
Politicians tend to tokenize working Americans for votes. President Biden enacted policies that washed the West of its traditional industries, appointing officials who despise tradesmen. After paying lip service to producers, his administration sought to gut their livelihoods.
There was a movement to abolish the BLM even before its complete ideological capture. If these agencies cannot serve Americans, they do not deserve public trust or power over the lands and resources we share.
A new administration is on its way, and we will be watching. President Donald Trump and his cabinet appointees should bring back a conservation ethos in which government agencies exist to serve the people who serve the land.