Agency in Political Crossfire: Land Management Bureau Explained

The fight in Congress over confirming Tracy Stone-Manning as director of the Bureau of Land Management has become one of the Biden administration’s most contentious nomination battles in its first seven months.

That’s partly because Stone-Manning would be one of the first environmentalists to lead the land bureau—a uniquely powerful Interior Department agency but relatively obscure outside the West—that’s known for its epic political, legal, and environmental battles.

Those include fights over the fate of Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument, oil and gas leasing within Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the future of coal mining in the West and the ...