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In San Juan County, Utah, the Bureau of Land Management is again offering oil and gas leases in culturally important sites. 32,000 acres, located between Hovenweep National Monument and Bears Ears National Monument, will be available for leasing, prompting opposition from local leaders as well as the National Park Service. This lease sale will be the third since last year that threatens cultural resources, and many previous leases are stalled by lawsuits in order to adequately assess impacts. However, the BLM is continuing to include these areas in lease sales without any stipulations or plans for protecting archaeologically significant places.
The San Juan County Commission has asked the BLM to "defer the sale to prevent the degradation of cultural heritage resources, dark skies, natural resources, visitor experience, water quality, and air quality in the area." By failing to conduct a full analysis of the area and ignoring the recommendation of the federal Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation, the BLM is putting culturally significant sites at risk to benefit the oil and gas industry.
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This is not just a political fight, an ideological fight, this is a fundamental fight about those shared values that we have, those areas that have been conserved for generation... suddenly we find ourselves trying to hang on to what we have, instead of growing the equity of the American people's holdings which is their public lands and their waterways, and their coastlines and their oceans.”
