SALT LAKE CITY -- The Bureau of Land Management on Tuesday removed nearly half the land it intended to offer in an oil and gas lease auction, including nearly 1,200 acres of land near Hovenweep National Monument on the Utah-Colorado border.

The 1,190 acres -- comprising two of the four parcels near the monument -- won't be offered at Friday's auction, the BLM said Tuesday in a release.

The parcels that were dropped were south of the monument, which protects five prehistoric villages of multistory towers across 20 miles of mesa tops and canyons.

Offering the parcels so close to the national monument drew protests from archeologists, conservation groups and a former park ranger.

The decision to not include these two parcels was made to make sure procedural issues -- such as complying with the review process dictated by federal environmental law -- were followed. Part of the process includes looking at comments that had been filed, said BLM spokeswoman Laura Williams.

''We have a process in place to ensure wise use of the public lands and in the lease sale it's a many tiered process," Williams said. ''And the process worked, we learned things that needed to be looked at harder."

An environmental group lashed out at the BLM Tuesday night, accusing it of shoddy work.

''They told the public a week ago that they had done their homework and they didn't," said Stephen Bloch, staff attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

He said the BLM signed its final approval last week, which included land near Hovenweep that is now being removed.