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Friday, July 17, 2026
The Bureau of Land Management plans to reopen the area around Chaco Culture National Historical Park for possible oil and gas leasing, giving the public until July 29 to comment. In April, the Interior Department moved to revoke protections surrounding Chaco Culture with a proposal to rescind Public Land Order 7923, which put wide areas of land around the park off limits to mining and drilling. The BLM has now opened a 14-day comment period for the draft Environmental Assessment for Proposed Revocation of Public Lands Order 7923. The move came just days after President Donald Trump slashed the boundaries of two Utah national monuments, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, by nearly 3 million acres. Both are important to tribes in the region. |
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More Alternate links: Google News | Twitter Revoking the protections would undo action taken in June 2023 by then-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who withdrew more than 336,400 acres of public land from mining and drilling, creating a 10-mile buffer around the park for 20 years. The new proposal would return discretion over mineral leasing to the Bureau of Land Management and reopen the land to new claims and development. Comments
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