In a virtual call with news media on Thursday, New Mexico officials, tribal leaders and advocates said they will mount resistance against a cascade of Trump administration proposals to mine and extract oil and gas on federal public lands within the state.
In the last several weeks alone, federal officials began moves to end a ban on oil and gas drilling around Chaco Culture National Historical Park, and announced a reversal on a mining ban in the Upper Pecos headwaters.
Leger Fernández, along with U.S. Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján, also wrote a letter on Thursday to Carson National Forest officials opposing a Canadian company’s proposal to mine for uranium near Canjilon, and requesting any federal review be postponed pending legislation to protect the Chama watershed from mineral extraction.
The push for drilling and mining in New Mexico follows President Donald Trump’s exhortation in his second term to expand domestic mineral production.
“It’s an attack on our heritage, it’s an attack on the relationship that New Mexicans have with this land,” U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-NM), who represents New Mexico’s 3rd Congressional District, said about the recent federal actions.
During Thursday’s call, Leger Fernández committed to “keep fighting and use every tool we have” and urged additional public participation.
“Sometimes we win, sometimes we don’t, but we need to keep fighting,” Leger Fernández said.
To that end, Acoma Gov. Charles Riley said that the pueblo submitted more than 400 public comments in opposition to ending an oil-and-gas drilling ban near Chaco Canyon, and young people went door-to-door to help older and more rural residents submit comments online.
“That level of engagement reflects something very important,” Riley said. “Chaco is not an abstract policy issue for us. It is a living cultural landscape that is central to who we are as pueblo people.”
However, Riley noted, “it should not take extraordinary measures by a tribal community to make a federal process accessible.”
Numerous Indigenous and conservation groups decried the seven-day comment period, which transpired over a period that included both Easter and several Tribal feast days.
“If the Department of Interior is going to make a decision of this magnitude, it must be based on a process that is fair, transparent, and genuinely inclusive of tribal voices,” Riley said.
In a statement provided to Source, a Department of Interior spokesperson said the Bureau of Land Management is preparing an environmental assessment on the proposed revocation of the drilling ban around Chaco that will include “two distinct opportunities for public input.” The seven-day “scoping” period, the statement says, “allows the public to help identify the issues, data needs, and alternatives that should be considered as the assessment is developed.” An additional 14-day comment period “will provide the public the chance to review and comment on the draft assessment itself once it is released.”
Mark Allison, director of the advocacy group New Mexico Wild, said the recent actions in New Mexico reflect a “broader systemic attack of the administration on public lands,” noting the failed efforts by congressional Republicans to sell or privatize millions of acres last year.
Last year’s mass layoffs and budget cuts at agencies that manage public lands, Allison said, represent a direct “attempt to really despoil and radically undermine the very idea of public lands, a uniquely American birthright.”
Allison said communities here will continue to organize against the changes proposed by the federal government.
“New Mexicans overwhelmingly support public lands and conservation,” he said. “They’re really part of our history, our cultures, our traditional uses – and really – our very identity as New Mexicans.”
