Advocates challenge Biden double-down on Trump-era fracking on sacred land in Greater Chaco

Today, a group of Diné and conservation groups challenged the Biden administration’s approval of fracking on nearly 45,000 acres—70 square miles—of the Greater Chaco region of northwest New Mexico. In April, the groups entered a legal agreement with the Biden administration under which it reconsidered these leasing decisions given the fracking’s close proximity to homes and within the sacred Sisnaateel Mesa Complex, central to Diné cosmology and akin in importance to Jerusalem, Mecca, or the Bodhi Tree in India. Betraying Interior Sec. Deb Haaland’s “Honoring Chaco” initiative, the Bureau of Land Management rubber-stamped approvals for this leasing in August.