Environmentalists are calling on President Joe Biden to take permanent and recent action to protect Chaco Culture National Historic Park from further destruction by the mining industry.
Last month, the administration took temporary measures to halt oil and gas drilling in a surrounding 10 mile area.
According to Pew Charitable Trusts, over the past decades 90% of federal land surrounding the park has been opened for drilling.
Max Trujillo, senior New Mexico field coordinator for the Hispanics Enjoying Camping Hunting and the Outdoors group, said the Chaco was once the center of Native American cultural activities.
“There is so much history in this region, as indigenous people we often say that ‘all roads lead to Chaco’ because it was true,” said Trujillo. “It was the hub of indigenous peoples in all of these regions. “
In addition to the 37,000 oil and gas wells drilled in the Chaco region, 15,000 miles of road have been constructed. The federal government has proposed a 20-year withdrawal from federal lands to prevent any further leasing of oil and gas within ten miles of Chaco Park.
Trujillo wants development throughout Northwestern New Mexico to be better managed to deal with significant impacts on the health and well-being of tribal communities.
“Activism developed to protect the community, and we have seen Native American Indian activism become such a resilient force, not only in the community but across the country and around the world,” said Trujillo. “There is so much history in this area.”
Indigenous peoples once visited the Chaco as a center of ceremony, commerce, and political administration. Now, Trujillo added, the UNESCO World Heritage Site is marked by oil wells, fracking torches and methane emissions.
“I hope we will one day live in a world where that wouldn’t be a question, and it wouldn’t be a difficult conversation,” Trujillo remarked. “It would be: ‘Yes, it’s a historic site that needs protection.’ “
The proposed federal withdrawal will not apply to individual Indian attributions or to area minerals owned by private, state and tribal entities.
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Wisconsin tribal organizations are raising new concerns over an Enbridge Line 5 pipeline diversion project.
The Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, which represents eleven Ojibway tribes in the Midwest, said the state was not providing a clear picture of how the project would affect surrounding tribal lands and waters, including disturbances to the wilderness and the potential for oil spills.
John Coleman, chief of the Commission’s environmental section, said the Line 5 environmental impact assessment project does not properly take tribal rights into account.
“There are tribes, tribes in Wisconsin, who are represented in the document, others are not,” said Coleman. “There is no justification presented as to why some tribes are included and others are not.”
The Natural Resources Department said it would consider all contributions from the public before releasing a new environmental impact statement for the project. Enbridge said maintaining and operating the nearly 70-year-old pipeline is critical to the company’s operations in the United States and southern Canada.
The territory of the Red Cliff Band is located just north of the proposed route of Line 5.
Noah Saperstein, environmental justice specialist for Red Cliff’s environmental department, said the draft environmental impact statement is too flawed to serve as a basis for future impact statements.
“If all of these concerns were addressed and included in the next environmental impact statement, it would be a document that would appear so radically different from what has been released for public review,” Saperstein said. “It would be something that would warrant another period of public comment.”
The Red Cliff Band passed a resolution calling for the removal of Line 5 from the Tribal Territories.
Linda Nguyen, environment director for Red Cliff’s environmental department, said preserving tribal lands begins with respecting tribal treaty rights.
“Red Cliff remains committed to protecting ‘nibi’, which is water, and ‘aki’, which is earth,” Nguyen said. “And the air of our present and ancestral homelands for our people and generations to come.”
Line 5 currently carries oil through Michigan and Wisconsin, traversing about a dozen miles of the Bad River Reservation in the Northwoods.
The proposed diversion, to bypass the reservation, was drafted after the tribe decided not to renew the pipeline right-of-way in 2017. Residents of Wisconsin can intervene by email or attend a public hearing on the proposal on the 2nd. February.
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Environmentalists say significant progress was made in 2021 towards the goals of the 30×30 Initiative of having 30% of the world’s land and oceans protected by the end of this decade.
The Biden administration adopted the plan and released a Year One Progress Report this week, outlining its accomplishments over the past 12 months.
Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, said that while the president was able to move forward on goals set for Utah and other Western states, much of the year was spent in catch up.
“Much of 2021 was aimed at reversing the damage of the Trump years,” Weiss pointed out. “Things like the restoration of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante. Now that these things have happened, the question is, what will President Biden do to create his own conservation legacy? “
The report recaps the progress of Biden’s America the Beautiful initiative, embracing the 30×30 goals to protect and restore nature, increase access to the outdoors, and engage tribal nations. It describes future actions to preserve the economic and environmental value of public lands in the face of climate change.
Weiss noted that state and local leaders urged Biden to act alone under the Antiquities Act to preserve endangered areas without waiting for Congress.
“Places like Kastner Range in Texas, Chumash Heritage off the California coast, Avi Kwa Ame in Nevada,” Weiss explained. “There are a number of these proposals where local leaders call on the president to use his authority to protect these areas for future generations.”
Weiss added that despite sporadic opposition to the plan, the vast majority of citizens see the importance of preserving high-value public lands and waters in Utah and other Western states.
“Even in Utah, there is broad support for the restoration of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante because people know that is what economies are built on in much of the rural west,” argued Weiss.
Biden’s goals include the development of locally-led conservation efforts, equitable and inclusive standards for conservation, sovereignty of tribal and indigenous communities, conservation of private lands, and science-driven actions.
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State conservation experts are developing a forest mapping tool to assess the impact of development on thousands of acres of public land.
Rick Webb, a board member for the Allegheny Blue Ridge Alliance and the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, explained that there are dozens of projects underway or under consideration in the three National Forests in the West Virginia region. central Appalachian highlands.
He said most of the projects involve clearcutting and road construction, which increases the vulnerability of the forest ecosystem and watershed.
“We are concerned that any further logging done now, a hundred years after the big cut, will be done in a way that preserves these forests,” said Webb, “to keep their function, to provide clean, fresh water.”
The Highlands contain the sources of the major river systems of the eastern United States, including the Potomac, James, and Cheat rivers.
Webb added that the steep mountain slopes and soil types make the area one of the most landslide prone in the country, which affects water quality and deserves special conservation attention.
Dan Schaffer is a CSI geospatial consultant with the Allegheny Blue Ridge Alliance who helped create the mapping tool, based on Geographic Information System technology.
He said he believed the public should be involved in the process of reviewing development projects that could potentially affect the diversity of plants and animals in the region.
“It’s murky, it’s often as much motivated by interest as it is by science,” Schaffer said. “And for the average person, they’re really out of that process. We’re trying to get them back at the table.”
He added that the tool offers accessible information on topography and geography, water quality and soil erodibility, as well as the locations and boundaries of proposed projects for Monongahela National Forest in Virginia- Western and George Washington and Jefferson National Forests in Virginia and West Virginia.
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