3 reasons to protect Greater Chaco Canyon from oil and gas drilling
Chaco Canyon, New Mexico
Andrew Kearns/FLICKR CC BY 2.0
Trump administration prepares to erase hard-fought protections for significant cultural landscape
The Trump administration is proposing a full revocation of the 20-year oil and gas ban in New Mexico’s Greater Chaco Region. This would be a devastating reversal of hard-won protections for one of the Southwest's most sacred landscapes.
Despite allowing just 14 days for Tribes and the public to weigh in on the proposal before making a final decision, more than 110,000 people submitted comments to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) calling for the continued protection of this living cultural landscape.
The Greater Chaco Region, which surrounds Chaco Culture National Historical Park (Chaco Canyon), is a sacred landscape important to the ongoing cultural practices of the Pueblo, Diné, Hopi and other Indigenous peoples throughout the Southwest.
Oil and gas companies have long made relentless attempts to drill and frack the land immediately bordering Chaco Canyon. In 2023, advocates for protecting the Greater Chaco Region breathed a (small) sigh of relief when, after a lengthy public engagement process, the Department of the Interior approved a mineral withdrawal that banned new oil and gas leasing and development for 20 years. This withdrawal protected more than 336,000 acres surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park and reflected the decades-long call of Pueblo, Hopi and other Tribes and Indigenous peoples to safeguard one of the most sacred sites in the Southwest.
But the landscape is more vulnerable than ever as the administration moves to revoke the ban. If successful, it would dismantle protections for cultural resources and sacred sites still used by Tribes today. Reopening Greater Chaco to drilling and mining would rob future generations of the chance to experience this living, ancestral landscape.
We need to protect this mineral withdrawal and keep oil and gas out of this region in order to protect this irreplaceable landscape.
Here are three reasons why:
1. Chaco Canyon is a significant cultural and sacred site for Pueblo, Hopi, Diné and Indigenous peoples across the Southwest
Casa Rinconada is one of the "kivas" located at the Chaco National Park.
Andrew Kearns/FLICKR CC BY 2.0
The Greater Chaco Region has been home to Indigenous people of the Southwest since time immemorial. Historians believe that people would come from far away to take part in religious rituals and political meetings. Today, large-scale ceremonial structures, known as kivas, dozens of ancient villages, roads and shrines that were built by the Ancestral Puebloan peoples between 850 and 1250 BCE, offer a glimpse into this ancient world.
Today, for Pueblo, Diné, Hopi and other Indigenous peoples around the world, Chaco Canyon is much more than a historical site. It’s a living landscape and a place representing an unbroken lineage of generations of cultural practice. And that connection doesn’t stop at the boundaries of the national park. But continued oil and gas development poses significant threats to the cultural resources left by the Ancestral Pueblo and other Tribes. In fact, more than 4,000 archeological and historic sites in the 10-mile protective zone have been identified according to research by Archaeology Southwest—and that number is expected to be much higher, because less than 20 percent of the protection zone has been surveyed.
2. Oil and gas drilling harms public health and well-being of Tribal and local communities
The northwest quadrant of New Mexico is completely saturated with oil and gas development.
Mason Cummings/TWS
It’s no secret that living in proximity to oil and gas development threatens community health, causing greater risks of asthma, adverse pregnancy outcomes, and cancers. In the Greater Chaco Region, these risks are an unfortunate reality, as oil and gas drilling—and the harmful and potent air pollutants emitted from such development continues to make daily life more toxic for local communities.
Over the past few decades, the Bureau of Land Management has leased over 90 percent of public lands surrounding Chaco Canyon for drilling. Oil and gas companies have drilled more than 37,000 wells in the area and built a sprawling network of roads (15,000 miles). That’s five times greater than the distance from Los Angeles to New York. Allowing for more drilling in the Greater Chaco Region will continue to put local communities at an even greater risk, poisoning their air, polluting groundwater and harming the region’s biodiversity.
3. Local communities have had enough
Chaco Canyon is considered one of the best places in the world to see stars.
Mason Cummings, TWS
More oil and gas development in the region would worsen traffic, release more toxic pollution, disrupt visitor experiences, fuel climate change and lead to more frequent oil and gas leaks. And the stakes could be even higher. In 2016, a fracking site exploded and caught on fire near the community of Nageezi, about 23 miles from Chaco Canyon. The fire burned for three days straight, and more than 50 residents had to be evacuated.
Local communities and those similarly impacted by oil and gas development have been far from silent, calling for the protection of this culturally significant landscape.
In July of 2026, the All Pueblo Council of Governors led a delegation of more than 40 Pueblo governors, Tribal and cultural leaders to Washington DC to support the protection of the sacred Chaco landscape.
“For Pueblo people, Chaco is not part of a distant past. It remains part of our present and our future,” said Governor Charles Riley of Pueblo of Acoma in a press statement. “Our ancestors entrusted us with the responsibility to protect these places, and we carry that same responsibility for the generations who will come after us. Once these landscapes are disturbed, they cannot be restored. That is why we continue to stand together in defense of Greater Chaco.”
More drilling and fracking in the Greater Chaco landscape would disregard these persistent calls for protection.
