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Most people think that National Parks and UNESCO World Heritage sites would be buffered from industrial extraction like fracking for oil. But during the last two weeks of May, we all began to think again.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is writing a new management plan for a multi-million acre swatch of public lands in northwestern New Mexico.  Contained within this area is the treasured Chaco Canyon National Historic Park.  One of less than a dozen UNESCO sites in the western states, it includes the ruins of what were the largest buildings in North America 1,000 years ago.

Chaco Rainbow

The hub of the Chacoan society is a series of well designed villages housed which some 6,000 people who navigated the surrounding countryside using perfectly straight roadways etched into the landscape. Chaco Canyon is called the “American Cradle of Civilization,” and the descendants of the Chaco culture are some of the modern Southwest tribal nations. The Chaco ruins are considered sacred sites, and are honored and respected by the Navajo, Hopi and Pueblo peoples.

But the Chacoans didn’t know that their communities were built atop the Mancos Shale, or that one day the US government would prioritize oil over culture and communities.

The BLM plan is being amended to help facilitate oil and gas development — particularly fracking — in the San Juan Basin.  In response, Earthworks and partners took action, sending alerts through our networks encouraging the boss of the BLM — Interior Secretary Sally Jewell — to use her authority to protect the lands surrounding Chaco Canyon from oil and gas development.  In just a few weeks, 173,000 people took action, flooding the BLM’s inboxes, as well as those of other lawmakers within the region with a simple message.

This powerful video from the Solstice Project describes exactly why fracking should be halted in the region. The Chaco ruins do not stop at the Park’s boundaries; in fact, the park was merely the center of an enormous Anasazi world. Some 35 Chacoan Great Houses in the region are unprotected, and could be threatened by fracking. Archaeologists have not properly surveyed many of the ancient roadways. But in a familiar echo of the Obama administration’s ‘all of the above’ energy policy, the BLM has already leased much of the surrounding landscape to oil and gas companies. If fracking consumes these cultural treasures, they could be lost forever.

Chaco is visited by tens of thousands of tourists every year who travel there not to see fracking pads, rigs, pipelines, flares, and massive storage tanks, but to see the landscape closer to what it may have looked like when the Chacoans lived there. And Chaco is situated in the San Juan Basin, a region where our partners like the San Juan Citizens Alliance have struggled for justice amidst the impacts of energy development for decades

This campaign is just beginning; the BLM will now take our comments and draft a plan, giving us another chance to pressure the agency, and more time to protect the Chaco region from fracking. We thank each and every one of the 173,000 people who spoke up to tell the BLM that prioritizing  oil over culture and communities is not acceptable. Together, we will work to prevent Chaco from becoming another another example of a special place getting fracked for short term gain.