LAT: Thieves and Vandals Put a National Gem at Risk
Strapped agencies are at a loss to save valued ruins across the West.
By Julie Cart, Times Staff Writer
August 28, 2006
TAMPERING: A petroglyph at Escalante National Monument in Utah bears cuts. Thieves use power tools to remove the rock art.
(Bureau of Land Management)
....At many federally managed cultural sites, damage is widespread, from casual pilfering by arrowhead collectors to excavating by professional thieves. Some haul power tools into canyons to cut out rock art panels. In a 2003 study of cultural and fossil resources on public land, the Bureau of Land Management reported that "increasing visitation to public lands is resulting in both intentional and inadvertent damage to these resources from collection, vandalism, surface disturbance…. Remote areas, once protected by their distance from populated areas, are now within easy reach of the hardy and well-equipped hiker, off-highway-vehicle user, and urban and suburban resident."
A study released this summer by the National Trust for Historic Preservation reached much the same conclusion and added that the BLM was too cash-strapped and understaffed to meet the challenge.
The report said that the BLM was failing to protect places with the most significant archeological and scientific holdings, such as (Colorado's) Canyons of the Ancients, that are part of the National Landscape Conservation System. Created by former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt in 2000, the system encompasses national monuments, historic trails, rivers and wilderness areas....Recently, the Bush administration recommended a $5-million cut to the budget of the BLM's National Landscape Conservation System....
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...John Silence, BLM's special agent in charge of law enforcement in Colorado...said the energy boom on public lands has punched roads into once-inaccessible areas and his agents have noted an increase in looting and vandalism near new oil fields.
"These guys are back there putting in pipelines and well sites," Silence said. "They are coming across archeological sites, they are finding the stuff and taking it home. There are pots coming out of the ground because of the oil and gas boom, no question."...
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-rockart28aug28,0,6937937.story?coll=la-home-nation