Administration moves to revoke protections for Greater Chaco

ALBUQUERQUE, NM — The Department of the Interior (DOI) today initiated a 7-day public scoping period on a potential full revocation for the Greater Chaco Region administrative mineral withdrawal, which currently protects 336,400 acres surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park from unchecked extractive development for 20 years. 

Now, those protections are at risk, and this rushed process rides roughshod over impacted Pueblos, Tribes and local communities. DOI’s full revocation proposal would reopen Greater Chaco to more drilling—further endangering sacred sites, threatening clean air and water, and robbing future generations of the freedom to experience this living, ancestral place. 

In a response to this news, Michael Casaus, New Mexico state director at The Wilderness Society said: 

“Rolling back protections for the Greater Chaco Region would be a grave injustice and a violation of the federal government’s trust responsibility to Tribal Nations. This landscape deserves lasting protection, not just for its significant cultural importance, but for the living cultures, communities and future generations that depend on it."

The Greater Chaco Region, which immediately surrounds Chaco Culture National Historical Park (Chaco Canyon), in northwest New Mexico, is a sacred landscape important to the ongoing cultural practices of the Pueblo, Hopi and other Indigenous peoples throughout the Southwest. 

It has been a cultural center to Indigenous people of the Southwest since time immemorial. Historians believe that Indigenous people would travel far distances to take part in religious rituals and political meetings there. 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 world. 

For media inquiries, contact kgilliland@tws.org