To: Tim Spisak, BLM Acting State Director, New Mexico

Save Sacred Chaco Canyon from Fracking!

The Greater Chaco region of New Mexico is home to Chaco Canyon, extensive Ancestral Pueblo ruins, and Navajo communities. These public lands are considered the cultural heart of the American Southwest and are under attack.

Despite years of public protest, on December 5 and 6, 2018, the Bureau of Land Management held an oil and gas lease sale of land parcels across the Greater Chaco Landscape to the highest bidder. These leases and fracking developments threaten the area’s rich cultural resources, treasured landscapes, and living Native communities, and must be stopped.

Bureau of Land Management, please stop the exploitation of this irreplaceable cultural landscape and implement safeguards to protect the culture and communities across the Greater Chaco Landscape, the heart of which lies in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why is this important?

Chaco Canyon is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a sacred ancestral place for the Hopi, Navajo, and Pueblo people. Oil and gas development threatens the area’s rich cultural resources, treasured landscapes, and living native communities while ignoring federal law.

Over 91% of Greater Chaco is already leased for oil and gas drilling, and after record-breaking protest comments in March 2018, Interior Secretary Zinke deferred the lease sale of over 4,000 acres of land in Greater Chaco, calling for more cultural study and consultation. But no additional study or consultation occurred. Although BLM quietly deferred parcels within the Farmington Field Office, the agency proceeded with the sale of 30 parcels and 41,000 acres of lands within the Rio Puerco Field Office, still within Greater Chaco and home to living Navajo communities and innumerable culturally sacred sites.

The Western Environmental Law Center is a nonprofit, public-interest environmental law firm and our expert attorneys are committed to fighting in court to save Greater Chaco and its people from oil and gas exploitation and to transition away from dirty fossil fuels. Please help us take a stand.