Comments closed July 29
Stop oil and gas drilling around Chaco Culture Park
Bureau of Land Management · Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Chaco 10-mile buffer zone
- What
- Revoking this withdrawal would reopen the 336,404-acre buffer around Chaco Culture National Historical Park to oil and gas leasing, on the strength of an EA whose own numbers show under 1 percent of the land has any development potential.
- Where
- Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Chaco 10-mile buffer zone, San Juan County public lands, NM
- How much
- The greater Chaco landscape holds 7,552 known historic properties, more than 145 traditional cultural properties, and four Chacoan great house outliers, inside a 10-mile buffer that tribal nations, archaeologists, and conservation groups spent years protecting.
- Decided
- Comments closed July 29, 2026. No decision document is on file yet.Date from The listing's own summary ↗, read October 29, 2026.
Where these four lines come from
- WhatOur plain-English read of the BLM NEPA Register DOI-BLM-NM-F010-2026-0002-EA ↗. Check it against the agency’s own words under Case.
- WhereThe places and states the notice names, as PLAN read them.
- How muchThe first sentence of our What’s at risk read of the notice; the whole read is under Case.
- DecidedJuly 29, 2026, from The listing's own summary ↗: “The comment period ends July 29 at midnight, Mountain daylight time (UTC-6).”. Read October 29, 2026. The decision document is the one on file in PLAN’s record.
- Read from PLAN’s record November 4, 2026.
What the proposal said, and what the decision did
No figure from the proposal has been checked against the decision on this fight yet. What the record does hold is the issues ledger below.
No decision document is on PLAN’s record for this fight yet. When the agency’s decision lands, what it answered goes here.
PLAN's read: critical threat
Revoking this withdrawal would reopen the 336,404-acre buffer around Chaco Culture National Historical Park to oil and gas leasing, on the strength of an EA whose own numbers show under 1 percent of the land has any development potential.
What’s at risk
If this goes through
Our plain-English read of the official notice ↗. Check it against the agency’s own words below.
In the agency’s own words
NOTE: To comment during the comment period, please click the "Participate Now" button at the top of the page. The comment period ends July 29 at midnight, Mountain daylight time (UTC-6). The Secretary of the Interior proposes to revoke the withdrawal of up to approximately 336,404 acres of public lands located within a radius of approximately 10 miles surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park (CCNHP) in San Juan County, northwestern New Mexico. Public Land Order (PLO) No. 7923 established a withdrawal in 2023 which withdrew these public lands from location and entry under the United States mining laws an…
The groups on this fight
4 groups predicted likely to care in New Mexico
Predicted likely to care is a guess from the group's sourced work in New Mexico, with no link to this decision. Give straight to them; nothing routes through us.
- Greater Chaco Coalition
Predicted likely to care · a guess
Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico: The coalition of Diné and Pueblo communities fighting drilling around Chaco.
- New Mexico Wild
Predicted likely to care · a guess
Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument, New Mexico: Led the community campaign for the 2014 designation and executive director Mark Allison spoke at the June 2025 Las Cruces rally against monument reductions and the Senate public land sell-off provisions.
- San Juan Citizens Alliance
Predicted likely to care · a guess
Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico: The San Juan Basin watchdog on the ground in greater Chaco.
- WildEarth Guardians
Predicted likely to care · a guess
Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico: Serial litigant over greater Chaco drilling permits.
Every group above is on STAND for Public Lands, with its court record, its filings and who backs it.
Who signs it
The notice names no signer PLAN could read. PLAN names a decision-maker only when the document names one.
The ground
The window has closed, so there’s no watch to set on it here.
In court on this ground
No court case we track is over Chaco Culture National Historical Park and Farmington Field Office.
Who holds the vote
PLAN’s record doesn’t tie a member of Congress to this fight yet. The scorecard grades the votes and bills that decide public lands; nothing joins a vote or a bill to this decision, so there’s no member to name here without guessing.
See how your members vote ↗BLM ePlanningWe track this on the agency’s own system of record, where most on-the-ground decisions live.
The reporting behind this
From More Than Just ParksKnow an open comment period we are missing, or spotted a wrong deadline? .
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