The Trump Administration recently announced that it plans to abolish a Biden-era federal ban on oil and gas drilling within 10 miles of the Chaco Culture National Historical Park in northern New Mexico, home to a large concentration of Indigenous ruins.

The announcement is part of the Trump Administration’s broader “drill, baby, drill” agenda of rolling back drilling and mining restrictions on the federal government’s vast land holdings as it aims to boost fossil fuel production. 

For example, the Interior Department is also preparing an offshore drilling plan that would reopen drilling leases in federal waters along the California coast and part of the Eastern Gulf of Mexico long closed to drilling. The original plan included waters off the Atlantic coast that oil companies haven’t accessed since the 1980s, but pushback from Republicans in the region caused the administration to remove that element of the plan. The Interior Department is also in the process of repealing protections and opening millions of acres of land in the Western Arctic and Northern Alaska for oil and gas drilling.

The Bureau of Land Management’s letter about revoking the protections around Chaco states that the reopening of the land to energy and mineral development comes in response to Trump’s January 2025 executive order, “Unleashing American Energy.” The Order calls on Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to review policies that unnecessarily restrict such development, including on many federal lands and waters recently protected by the Biden Administration. 

The effort to drill near the sacred site is moving forward even though, according to the Bureau of Land Management’s own estimates, the ban would only prevent a few dozen wells being drilled over the next 20 years.

In 2023, then-Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the nation’s first Senate-confirmed Indigenous Cabinet secretary, imposed a 20-year ban on leasing within 10 miles of  Chaco Canyon and said the decision was the culmination of decades of effort to protect the historic landscape. She said Chaco Canyon is a sacred place that holds deep meaning for the “Indigenous peoples whose ancestors have called this place home since time immemorial.”

In June, the New Mexico Congressional Delegation invited Secretary Burgum to visit Chaco Canyon before deciding its fate, an offer the Secretary did not take up before issuing the directive to begin revoking the protections.

The letter to Burgum states that while oil and gas development is important to the state, it should not occur in a place like Chaco Canyon, where historical architecture is etched into a sweeping expanse of mountains and mesas.

“If the Trump Administration diminishes these protections, it will face widespread public opposition and yield minimal benefits in terms of expanded oil and gas development,” states the letter. The members of Congress, including U.S. Senators Martin Heinrich and Melanie Stansbury, said that the BLM’s own estimates show that the existing prohibition on drilling “protects approximately 4,730 documented archaeological sites while oil and gas operators forgo development of only a few dozen wells.”

According to a recent analysis from the UCLA Institute of Environment and Sustainability, 91 percent of public lands in the Greater Chaco Region in northwestern New Mexico are already leased for oil and gas drilling. Due to this concentration, members of the Navajo Nation, or Diné community, are twice as likely to live within half of a mile of an oil and gas facility compared to other New Mexicans. 

Greater Chaco is loosely defined as an 8,000-square-mile area surrounding Chaco Canyon National Historical Park, one of only two dozen UNESCO World Heritage sites in the U.S. 

Rebecca Sobel, climate and health director of WildEarth Guardians, said the Chaco Canyon protections from mineral extraction serve many purposes.

“Chaco is not just a park, it’s a living cultural landscape,” said Sobel. “Rolling back protections would re-expose Pueblo and Diné communities to more air pollution, industrial traffic, and spill risks while chipping away at one of the world’s most significant Indigenous heritage sites.”

Sobel said the law requires the Trump Administration to engage in meaningful tribal consultation and environmental review before altering the existing ban. She added that the administration should expect fierce pushback from tribes, New Mexicans, and the courts if federal officials try to bulldoze the process or the science.

Economically, the math of rolling back the drilling restrictions doesn’t make sense, Sobel added. “Opening new tracts near Chaco is purely speculative when thousands of existing leases and wells already surround the area, many underperforming or stranded by price volatility and limited infrastructure,” she said. “Meanwhile, the so-called ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ stripped agencies of discretion in leasing decisions, putting nearly every available parcel on the chopping block. With third quarter earnings showing record production and profits for oil and gas giants, taxpayers are left shouldering the mounting costs of spills, methane leaks, and orphaned wells that are almost never priced into lease sales.”

In April, New Mexican lawmakers reintroduced the Chaco Cultural Heritage Area Protection Act, which would permanently prevent future leasing and development of oil, gas, and minerals on non-Indian federal lands within a 10-mile buffer zone around Chaco Culture National Historical Park. 

The delegation followed up this action in September by hosting a press conference in front of the U.S. Capitol with 20 Governors and leaders from the Santa Ana, Picuris, Cochiti, Zia, Tesuque, Acoma, Santo Domingo, and Laguna Pueblos to demand the Trump Administration permanently protect Chaco Canyon.

Sobel said prior rollbacks of protections at Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments show how landscape-scale cultural sites remain vulnerable to changing administrations and extraction on adjacent land. She said a similar threat looms over the Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni monument near Grand Canyon National Park, designated by President Biden to protect Indigenous homelands and prevent uranium mine expansion. It is also now potentially a target of extraction.

Not all members of Navajo Nation are in favor of the buffer zone around Chaco. In January, Navajo Nation sued the Interior Department in federal court, alleging that the government made its decision without properly consulting with its members about the economic consequences. Some Navajo tribal members with land allotments depend on oil and gas royalties that could be negatively impacted by the ban. The Biden Interior Department responded that its order does not affect the mineral rights or development on the land allotted to Navajos.