When now-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland was the US Representative for New Mexico's First District she was one of the sponsors of the Chaco Culture Heritage Protection Act of 2019 that would have codified the 10-mile buffer zone around Chaco Canyon. Haaland is a member of the Laguna Pueblo—just one of New Mexico's Indigenous Nations who consider the Greater Chaco Wash as sacred. Santa Fe-based Wild Earth Guardians joined other interested parties and sued the Trump Organization's Bureau of Land Management to stop oil and gas encroachment on Chaco Culture National Historic Park.
In 2021 New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich asked Sec. Haaland to end leasing within a 10-mile radius of the park because Chaco is an International Dark Sky Park at risk to oil and gas flaring. So, in partnership with the Bureau of Indian Affairs BLM completed a draft resource management plan for Chaco and a decision released.
Now, citing the scarcity and fragility of water supplies in the region a three-judge panel on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled the BLM didn’t properly gauge long-term impacts under the National Environmental Policy Act so it suspended some 200 permits and blocked permits issued by the Trump Organization.
A survey conducted by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) showed that during the Trump years BLM was plagued with staff shortages, high turnover and partisan rancor. Director Tracy Stone-Manning has called nearly every Trump era ruling illegal including its failure to manage mustangs safely while blows to morale and an exodus of employees have contributed to horse mortalities during gathers. So, in 2022 Interior Secretary Deb Haaland released the outline for a restructured BLM promising to return its main headquarters to DC while increasing its role in the Mountain West by improving a demoralized Grand Junction, Colorado presence.
The ancient Chacoans represent a cautionary tale of environmental destruction followed by extirpation: a trophic cascade where human is the apex predator and decimates a landscape so stopping further ecological devastation by industry is the right thing to do.
Representing Wild Earth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity, Farmington, New Mexico-based Western Environmental Law Center sued to revoke Trump era leases in the Permian Basin.
No comments:
Post a Comment