Tell Secretary Burgum: Keep Drilling Away From Chaco Canyon

More than 100,000 people like you submitted public comments on Trump’s plan to strip protections from federal land surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park. But the Interior Department may still move forward if we don't keep the pressure on.

Chaco Canyon is far more than a national park. For centuries, it was a center of Pueblo culture, and the greater Chaco landscape remains culturally and spiritually significant to Tribal communities today. Its ancient roads, structures, sacred sites, and archaeological resources extend far beyond the park’s official boundaries.

In 2023, the Interior Department protected more than 336,000 acres of federal land surrounding Chaco from new mineral leasing and mining claims. But now the Trump administration is considering putting an irreplaceable cultural landscape at risk of new oil, gas, uranium, and mineral development.

Tell Interior Secretary Doug Burgum: Act now to protect Chaco Canyon from drilling and mining and keep it wild.

The threat is immediate. The Bureau of Land Management just finished taking public comments on the proposed rollback and is reviewing the proposal. The Interior Department has not yet made its final decision — which means Secretary Burgum still has the power to keep these protections intact.

Once drilling rigs, roads, pipelines, and mining operations move into a sensitive cultural landscape, the damage cannot simply be undone. Protecting Chaco means looking beyond the boundaries of the national park itself and recognizing that the surrounding landscape is part of what makes this place extraordinary.

Tribal leaders, conservation advocates, elected officials, and members of the public have fought for years to protect the greater Chaco landscape. The federal government should respect those efforts instead of reopening protected lands to extractive industries.

Secretary Burgum has a choice: preserve an irreplaceable cultural and environmental landscape for future generations, or sacrifice its protections for more drilling and mining.

Add your name now and tell Secretary Burgum to act before the Interior Department makes its final decision: keep these protections in place and keep drilling and mining away from Chaco Canyon.

The petition to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum reads:

“Do not reopen the protected federal lands surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park to new drilling or mining. Keep the full Chaco Canyon mineral withdrawal protections in place.”