Trump Administration Advances Plans to Open Protected Lands for Oil, Gas, and Logging

The Bureau of Land Management has proposed eliminating a 10-mile (16 km) buffer that shields Chaco Culture National Historical Park in north-western New Mexico from oil, gas and uranium extraction. At the same time, the U.S. Forest Service has filed a proposal to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which has protected roughly 45 million acres of national forest from road construction, drilling and logging. Both moves are part of the administration’s effort to expand fossil-fuel development on federal lands.

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Chaco Culture National Historical Park, a 53-square-mile UNESCO World Heritage site, contains ruins of ancient Pueblo peoples and is noted for its dark-sky conditions. The park’s buffer was created in 2023 to prevent industrial encroachment.

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The Roadless Rule, enacted in 2001, barred new roads in designated “roadless” areas of national forests, preserving old-growth ecosystems from logging, mining and associated infrastructure.

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• Buffer zone: 10 mi (16 km) around a 336,400-acre area adjacent to Chaco.

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• Public comment period for the Chaco proposal lasted 14 days, closed in July, and received roughly 100,000 submissions, most of them opposed.

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• The Roadless Rule protects about 45 million acres of forest; rescinding it would allow road, drilling and logging projects across that expanse.

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• The public comment window for the roadless-rule proposal remains open until September 21.

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• “UNESCO follows developments that may have implications for world heritage properties and their outstanding universal value,” — UNESCO spokesperson.

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• “For too long, outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our communities,” — Brooke Rollins.

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• Forest Service chief Tom Schultz said the agency intends to increase forest management activities to protect communities from wildfire.

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• The Department of the Interior and the National Park Service declined to comment.

The Guardian

Former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland warned that removing the Chaco buffer would cause irreversible damage to the sacred landscape and pose health risks to nearby Navajo communities.

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Maude Dinan, program manager at the National Parks Conservation Association, said the park offers a “transportive experience” of ancient Pueblo life and that oil- and gas-company activity would erase its sacredness.

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Emma Powell of the Alaska Wilderness League called the Tongass and Chugach forests “global treasures” that should not become bargaining chips.

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Maggie Rabb, executive director of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, argued that NEPA processes are being treated as “mere boxes to check” to enable clear-cutting of old-growth forests.

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Randi Spivak, public lands policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the administration is pushing the largest evisceration of public-lands protection in American history.

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Stakeholders have until September 21 to submit comments on the proposed rescission of the Roadless Rule. The BLM’s buffer-zone proposal will be reviewed by the Interior Department, which has not yet issued a formal response. Future decisions will determine whether the proposed expansions of oil, gas and logging activities proceed on lands currently protected for their cultural, ecological or scientific value.

The Guardian