The U.S. Department of the Interior has announced it will rescind a buffer zone around Chaco Culture National Historical Park in northwestern New Mexico. The site was a hub for ancient Puebloan activity from the 9th to the 13th centuries and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The area surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park is a checkerboard of public, private, and tribal lands, and some of those lands are 160-acre allotments owned in trust with the US government by the Navajo people. Other tribes in the region today who are also part of the discussion of protection of the area include Pueblo tribes, the Jicarilla Apache Nation, and the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes.
The 10-mile buffer zone, which halts new oil and gas drilling leases, was established in 2023 under the Biden Administration.
The Greater Chaco Coalition said in a statement:
“Local communities have been experiencing a devastating increase in drilling activities that threatens their health and the health of the land.”
Mario Atencio is an organizer with the Greater Chaco Coalition who lives in Counselor, New Mexico. And he owns an allotment there —160 acres that the federal government gave to his grandmother in the 1930s.
In 2023, when U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland approved the moratorium on new oil and gas leases in the region, Atencio and other Navajo allotment holders rejoiced. The plan to rescind the buffer zone around Chaco Canyon was included in Project 2025, the conservative roadmap for the Trump administration to implement a right-wing agenda.
“What the Trump administration did was take a really strident stance against this bipartisan conservation issue,” said Atencio. “The very common-sensical protection of a UNESCO World Heritage Site is made complicated by oil and gas operators. We're part of huge national international policy debates and affects us locally, but ultimately, you know, it's what's always left out again, is the public health discussion. It's always complicated by outside interests.”
Some Navajo allottees are in favor of increased drilling activities because they rely on the royalties as income. Ervin Chavez is the chapter president of the Nageezi chapter of the Navajo Nation, just 30 miles from Chaco Canyon. Chavez is part of a group of allottees who oppose the new ban on leasing.
“You will never be a billionaire on oil and gas revenues. [But,] if you have something that’s under your land, and you can live off, or make money, or raise your family and send them to school, you would use it,” said Chavez.
Earlier in 2025, the Navajo Nation filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior, arguing that the agency’s plan to withdraw land from new oil and gas leasing violates federal law and could deprive allottees of millions of dollars.
