The Biden administration ditched a Trump-era land-use plan update Thursday that could have opened potentially millions of acres of land in northwest New Mexico to oil and gas drilling and sparked loud protests from Democrats and conservation groups.
The Bureau of Land Management announced Thursday that it terminated an environmental impact statement evaluating a land-use plan amendment concerning how oil and gas development is carried out over the next decade across federal and Native American tribal lands.
The region at issue surrounds the Chaco Culture National Historical Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site crisscrossed by ancient highways that are considered sacred to the Hopi and Pueblo tribes.
BLM had quietly posted on its New Mexico website in December that it was halting work on the plan and that it had “started an internal evaluation of the existing resource management plan to determine the next steps in updating it.”
