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Yesterday saw a flurry of movement on the personnel front of the Biden administration's environmental agenda.
In a bipartisan vote, the Senate confirmed Brenda Mallory to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), the body that advises the president on environmental issues such as justice and conservation. CEQ is also in charge of implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which is a bedrock environmental law that was rolled back during the Trump administration. Mallory has decades of experience, and will be the first Black chair of CEQ.
News broke yesterday that Biden intends to nominate National Wildlife Federation senior advisor for conservation policy Tracy Stone-Manning as the next Director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Stone-Manning has served as chief of staff to Montana's former Governor Steve Bullock, in addition to leading Montana's department of Environmental Quality. She brings extensive experience working with diverse constituents to realize environmental progress. Stone-Manning would enter a badly damaged BLM on the heels of never-confirmed anti-public lands extremist William Perry Pendley.
President Biden officially announced that he will nominate Tommy Beaudreau, an Obama-era official, to be Deputy Interior Secretary. Beaudreau served as the first director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, in addition to Interior chief of staff. The nomination comes after extensive work to find a moderate nominee who could work effectively on both sides of the aisle.
Nine others were listed in President Biden's announcement of official nominations, including three at Interior, three at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and three within the Energy and Transportation departments. All will have significant impact on President Biden's ambitious climate and conservation agenda.
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Tracy Stone-Manning has the vision and experience to lead the Bureau of Land Management through one of its most pressing times. Over the last four years, political leaders gutted the Bureau of Land Management headquarters and turned the agency into a rubber stamp for drilling and mining permits.The damage wrought by the Trump administration on an agency which manages one-tenth of the land area in the United States is almost incalculable."
