Natural History Wanderings

President Biden and Interior Secretary Haaland have protected a 10-mile radius around Chaco Canyon from new oil and gas drilling for 20 years.

Chaco Canyon is a biodiversity hotspot, home to elk, bobcats and a wide range of birds. It was also a major center of ancestral Pueblo culture.

Over the years, we’ve rallied tens of thousands of concerned citizens to ask decision makers to protect Chaco, which already bears the scars of fossil fuel operations. Oil and gas wells, roads, pipelines, and other infrastructure have destroyed significant cultural sites and transformed others into industrial parks.4

This is a big victory, but we still have more work to do: Passing permanent protections for Chaco through Congress, defending more of our irreplaceable public lands, and defending these wins when they come under attack.