For the first time in six years, federal land in California could be auctioned for oil and gas development, including thousands of acres along the edge of Carrizo Plain National Monument.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) plans to offer 43 parcels totaling approximately 35,000 acres across San Luis Obispo, Kern, Kings, and Fresno counties at a Dec. 1 lease sale.
Nearly 13,000 of those acres are federal land and mineral rights in the Temblor Range along Carrizo Plain’s eastern boundary, according to an analysis by Los Padres ForestWatch, which is preparing to formally challenge portions of the sale.
“We’re not talking about lands inside the monument boundary, but drilling immediately adjacent to the boundary can have a lot of spillover effects into the monument itself,” ForestWatch Executive Director Jeff Kuyper told New Times.
The roughly 250,000-acre Carrizo Plain National Monument protects one of the largest remaining undeveloped portions of the southern San Joaquin Valley ecosystem and provides habitat for rare and endangered species, including San Joaquin kit foxes, giant kangaroo rats, and blunt-nosed leopard lizards.
Kuyper said potential oil development around the monument could require clearing habitat for well pads and access roads while bringing noise and air pollution to the largely undeveloped landscape. Spills could also contaminate soil or water, he said.
“There’s a whole laundry list of problems that come in and accompany oil extraction,” Kuyper said. “Endangered wildlife don’t know or understand the boundaries of a national monument, and so one of our big concerns is how industrialized oil development will impact the whole suite of endangered species that rely on those lands for survival.”
BLM said selling a lease doesn’t authorize a company to immediately begin drilling.
Winning bidders receive the right to develop federal oil and gas resources, but companies would still need to submit applications for permits to drill before development could begin. BLM would then review those applications, open them for public review, and conduct additional environmental analysis.
In an Oct. 1 statement, the agency said parcels included in federal lease sales also carry stipulations intended to protect important natural resources.
ForestWatch argues that waiting until the drilling-permit stage would be too late.
“Once lands like this are auctioned off to oil companies, those oil companies generally have a right to drill in those areas,” Kuyper said. “It’s important to, I think, fully evaluate the impacts of what this additional oil exploration and development would entail at the leasing stage.”
Carrizo Plain isn’t the only environmentally sensitive area ForestWatch identified within the proposed lease sale.
The organization found that approximately 900 acres proposed for leasing overlap the Lokern-Buena Vista Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC), while more than 400 acres overlap the Chico Martinez ACEC near the San Luis Obispo-Kern county line.
BLM identifies ACECs through its land-use planning process as areas requiring special management attention because of significant environmental, cultural, or other resources. Kuyper said they’re intended to receive additional protections from activities such as oil drilling, mining, and commercial livestock grazing.
The 3,234-acre Chico Martinez ACEC, which BLM first designated in 1984, contains cultural and paleontological sites and habitat for endangered species including the San Joaquin kit fox and blunt-nosed leopard lizard. The 15,465-acre Lokern-Buena Vista ACEC contains a large relatively undeveloped remnant of San Joaquin Valley habitat and supports several federally listed species.
BLM completed scoping on the parcels in July and closed public comment on its environmental analysis in September.
The proposal is now entering another stage of public review.
A 30-day protest period opened Oct. 1 and runs through Nov. 2, giving members of the public an opportunity to formally object to individual parcels or the broader sale.
ForestWatch plans to file an administrative protest asking BLM to remove parcels the organization believes could harm wildlife habitat and other sensitive resources.
Kuyper said BLM can remove parcels in response to protests before the auction. In other cases, disputed parcels can be auctioned while protests remain unresolved.
If the Dec. 1 sale proceeds, ForestWatch said it would be California’s first federal oil and gas lease sale since 2020 and the largest in the state since at least 2009.
This article appears in Oct 8-15, 2026.
