Since he retook office in 2025, President Trump has pursued resource extraction on public lands. From expanding drilling in Alaska to shrinking national monuments in Utah, his Department of the Interior (DOI) has explored the potential economic output of federal lands, prompting fierce public debate.
The latest area in question lies next to Chaco Culture National Historic Park, an important locus of Indigenous culture in New Mexico. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has begun official proceedings to open over 330,000 acres to mining, oil, and coal development.
What Is Chaco Culture National Historic Park?
Located in northwestern New Mexico, Chaco Culture National Historic Park was one of the country’s first national monuments. President Theodore Roosevelt gave it the designation in 1907. The 34,000-acre area is an important Indigenous historical site, with its earliest inhabitants dating to 900 BCE.
From 850 to 1250, Chaco Canyon was home to the Pueblo people. “Remarkable for its monumental buildings, distinctive architecture, astronomy, artistic achievements, it served as a hub of ceremony, trade, and administration for the Four Corners Area — unlike anything before or since,” the NPS said in park literature. The area is important to many Native American tribes, including the Hopi, Jicarilla Apache, Navajo, and Ute Mountain.
In 1980, Congress redesignated the land as a National Historic Park and added 13,000 acres. In 1987, UNESCO recognized it as a World Heritage Site. The park attracted approximately 87,000 visitors in 2023, according to NPS data.
The site offers 33 campsites, and its high elevation offers excellent wildlife viewing opportunities, with over 130 species of birds. “Chaco Culture National Historical Park is located at an elevation between 6,040 ft and 6,860 ft and represents an ‘island’ of protected biodiversity within the San Juan Basin,” the NPS explained.
The Proposal
The current debate focuses on the public land surrounding the park, not the parkland itself. In 2023, in a public land order, then-Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland withdrew public land within a 10-mile radius of the park (or about 336,000 acres) from any new oil, gas, or mining leases for 20 years. Valid, existing leases would be allowed to continue.
The department said the action grew out of substantial consultation with Tribal Nations. It was designed to “better protect the sacred and historic sites and Tribal communities currently living in northwest New Mexico,” the press release said.
The Department of the Interior (DOI) under the Trump Administration first expressed interest in changing this public land order in 2025. It sent a letter to several Pueblo Nations inviting them to participate in a 14-day comment period about possibly undoing the order to allow mining again.
On July 15, the BLM raised the issue again. It announced it had opened a 14-day comment period about reversing the land order. In documentation, the BLM directly cited the desire to reopen the land to mineral and mining leasing. The BLM estimates that in the next 20 years, this land could see 129 wells for mineral extraction and 14 wells for oil and gas, for a total of 2,723 acres. Other potential resources that could be extracted include helium, uranium, and coal.
The Secretary of the Interior has the power to modify, revoke, or declare public land orders. Since they are not laws, they can easily change from administration to administration.
The Reaction
Many conservation and environmental groups have expressed worry over plans to revoke protections for this land in Chaco Canyon. The National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) worried that drilling would tarnish this sacred landscape.
“This decision sends a dangerous message that no place, not even one that holds a thousand years of history, is too important to sacrifice for oil and gas drilling … The Trump administration is auctioning it off to the oil and gas industry, trading sacred and scenic vistas for pumpjacks and the drum of drilling. This is not about energy strategy. It’s an attack on cultural heritage, community health, and all that our national parks were created to protect,” NPCA’s New Mexico Program Manager Maude Dinan said in a press release.
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