Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) issued a scathing argument against President Joe Biden’s controversial Bureau of Land Management (BLM) nominee, Tracy Stone-Manning, during a committee meeting Thursday, illustrating the dangers of tree spiking amid revelations of Stone-Manning’s involvement in a past tree spiking crime.
Risch spoke ahead of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee voting along party lines, 10–10, for Stone-Manning after heated debate about the nominee’s role in delivering a letter in 1989 on behalf of a since-convicted ecoterrorist.
The Idaho senator, who earned a forestry degree before becoming a successful trial lawyer and later governor of Idaho, explained during the meeting that tree spiking can be deadly because saws explode the way “a hand grenade goes off.”
“Shrapnel goes every direction. It destroys the saw, be it a band saw or a circular saw. … It will either kill or injure anyone that is within range of the shrapnel,” Risch said.
While she was a graduate student at the University of Montana in Missoula in 1989, Stone-Manning mailed a profane letter to the U.S. Forest Service on behalf of John P. Blount, an individual in her “circle of friends,” alerting federal authorities that trees in Idaho’s Clearwater National Forest that were scheduled to be cut down had been sabotaged with metal spikes.
After the Forest Service received the letter, Stone-Manning and six other individuals in Missoula were the target of a 1989 grand jury investigation for which they were subpoenaed and required to submit fingerprints, as well as handwriting and hair samples. However, the 1989 grand jury did not uncover enough evidence to charge Blount or anyone else with the crime. The case was not solved until Blount’s ex-wife reported him to authorities two years later, and in doing so, also named Stone-Manning as the person who mailed the letter for him. In exchange for immunity, Stone-Manning testified in a 1993 trial against Blount, who was later convicted for the tree spiking crime and sentenced to 17 months in prison.
In a questionnaire ahead of Stone-Manning’s June committee hearing, she reported inaccuracies about the tree spiking case, including falsely claiming she was never the target of a federal investigation.
Risch during his remarks also warned spikes in his state’s forest are “still there,” saying he spoke to the Forest Service and was told authorities were unable to remove any leftover spikes because they had no way of knowing which trees they...
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