Canyons of the Ancients National Monument
Stand · Find your defenders

Who’s defending Canyons of the Ancients?

4 groups have it in their care

National monument in Colorado, 176,056 acres, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, designated in 2000.

The defenders

The groups doing the most work here

4 groups are on the record for Canyons of the Ancients, each tied to it by a source our editors read, in the order they carry the weight. Give directly; nothing routes through us.

On the ground

Also in the fight

18 more work nearby but are not tied to Canyons of the Ancients on the record

The situation

What’s happening to Canyons of the Ancients

Over 6,000 recorded archaeological sites in 176,000 acres, the highest density in the United States, with thousands more still buried. Homes, granaries, and kivas of ancestral Puebloan people. Oil and gas drilling is destroying sites that have not yet been discovered, let alone studied.

  1. 2000Designated as national monument
Oil and gas drilling near archaeological sites

Source: San Juan Citizens Alliance

No public comment window is open on Canyons of the Ancients right now. A call script is ready on the Public Lands Action Network, and the groups above are how the fight gets funded and argued in the meantime.

In the courts

The cases over this place

The dockets we track that name Canyons of the Ancients directly. Active first.

WonMountain States Legal Foundation v. BushD.C. Circuit · filed 2001 · Docket ↗

Your move

How to stand for Canyons of the Ancients

Build my lineup around Canyons of the Ancients: the leading group here opens it, and the other seats fill from this record.

Canyons of the Ancients has defenders. It needs more.

4 groups on the record, San Juan Citizens Alliance with 9 staff + 20 volunteers. That is who is holding it. Find your way in.

Sources and methodThe situation, timeline, and threats: the MTJP threatened-lands record for Canyons of the Ancients, with per-item sources. Court cases: CourtListener dockets in the MTJP litigation database (1 naming this place). Group crews and program ratios: IRS Form 990 via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, latest filed year, EINs on each group’s profile. Which groups are on the record for this place: MTJP editors tie a group to a fight only with a source link they have read, one link at a time. A group without one is shown as likely to care, a guess from the federal court record and the group’s own mission and footprint. Org-reported figures are always labeled. Data verified as of 2026-10-03. Nothing on this page is pay-to-play.