Oil and Gas Lease Sales Near Bears Ears National Monument

May 3, 2024 — The Bureau of Lands Management (BLM) issued a decision cancelling 25 parcels, totaling more than 40,296 acres, from oil and gas leasing in the Lands Between—a major win for this tremendously significant cultural landscape and for descendant communities across the region. The decision follows Advocates for the West’s 2023 settlement requiring BLM to reconsider two lease sales in consultation with Tribes and Pueblos for whom the area is religiously and culturally significant.

January 24, 2023 — Advocates for the West reached a settlement agreement through which the Bureau of Land Management will complete additional environmental analysis and consider a “no leasing” alternative that evaluates cancelling the leases in the Lands Between. The agency also agrees to complete a new review under the National Historic Preservation Act, inviting consultation from any Tribe that attaches religious and cultural significance to historic properties in the area. Additionally, in accordance with the Endangered Species Act, the Bureau agrees to examine the effects of leasing decisions on the Mexican spotted owl, southwestern willow flycatcher, yellow-bill cuckoo, Colorado pikeminnow, humpback and bonytail chub, and razorback sucker.

April 8, 2021 – Advocates for the West reinitiated our lawsuit in D.C. District Court against two Bureau of Land Management oil and gas lease sales outside Bears Ears National Monument. Our case, representing Bears Ears Partnership (formerly Friends of Cedar Mesa), largely focuses on negative cultural resource impacts (NEPA and NHPA claims) and also includes an ESA consultation claim.

February 6, 2019 – Advocates for the West filed suit to halt oil and gas lease sales in an unprotected and archaeologically rich area in southern Utah called the Lands Between. Located between Canyons of the Ancients and Bears Ears National Monuments, this region is by far the densest archaeological area open to oil and gas leasing on public lands in the United States. It is home to tens of thousands of archaeological sites considered sacred to many Native American peoples, including the Hopi, Zuni, Ute, Navajo and Pueblos of New Mexico.

Under the Obama Administration, requests by energy companies for leasing in the area were deferred due to the region’s vast and largely undiscovered cultural resources. The Trump Administration, by contrast, has sought to grant every request of the oil and gas industry.

Over the course of three lease sales, the Department of Interior is attempting to lease off almost every acre of these archaeologically rich lands. The leasing area contains dozens of ancient community centers and Chacoan Great Houses that are larger than the largest archaeological site in Bears Ears National Monument.

Our lawsuit targets the first of three related oil and gas lease sales, which was held in March 2018. The government is tying its analyses of two subsequent sales to the first. Between the three, more than 76,000 acres of land will have been leased on 44 parcels of culturally rich areas. In those parcels, the BLM acknowledges the existence of more than 1,700 archaeological sites.