For four years, a band of looters pilfered archaeological sites in Southern Nevada and California, stealing ancient corncobs, grinding tools, pottery fragments, and baskets.
Armed with excavation equipment, the thieves managed to slip in and out of these culturally sensitive areas until December 2001, when a park ranger in Death Valley National Park spotted two men loading rocks into a truck.
Considered the most extensive case of archaeological theft ever investigated, it resulted in the conviction of five people for stealing more than 11,000 artifacts and damaging 13 sites, including the White Cliff petroglyph site and Kane Springs Wash.
With millions of acres to cover, Southern Nevada land managers are enlisting the help of volunteers to prevent such crimes through the Cultural Site Stewardship program managed by UNLV’s Public Lands Institute on behalf of the Southern Nevada Agency Partnership (SNAP). “Their job is to be the eyes and ears,” says the institute’s George Phillips. “They’re not archaeologists or law enforcement officers, they’re just people who have an affinity for the history and pre-history of the area.”
The program was launched last year and involves SNAP, which is comprised of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Forest Service. The federal agencies don’t have the funding for the personnel to care for these sites, which number in the thousands, so the cadre of about 175 volunteers plays an important role, says Bill Dickinson, superintendent of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.
“A lot of sites are at risk,” he says. “By having an expanded core of people who are keeping an eye on those sites, we are going to achieve far more than if we tried to do it alone. We just don’t have the resources to do what needs to be done.”
In the first nine months of 2005, volunteers helped discover 25 significant acts of damage — bullet holes in petroglyph panels, grafitti, and other types of vandalism. People were caught violating the law: starting an illegal fire inside an ancient shelter and collecting artifacts from the ground.
“Most people who damage these sites don’t realize the culture of the area,” Phillips says. But others do, and they loot the sites to sell the artifacts or keep them to display in their homes.
The cultural site stewards undergo classroom and field training and then are assigned a specific site. Early habitation and hunting sites are some of the cultural features of the areas. Some of the sites are pre-Puebloan and others are identified as dating back more than 2,000 years.
Volunteer Bill James is responsible for part of Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area and coordinates about 30 volunteers. They hike through their areas regularly — every week, depending on the location — looking for vandalism, looting, tire marks, or anything unusual that could be a threat. They also take photographs to catalog any changes between visits. If volunteers notice a problem, they photograph it and submit a report. If the problem is egregious, they follow emergency protocol to get federal authorities involved.
James says he signed up for the program because he enjoys outdoor activities and he wants to make a contribution. “These sites are part of our history and heritage, and I’d like to think they’ll be around for future generations.”
More than 2,000 Local Volunteers
The institute oversees both the stewardship program and the Southern Nevada Interagency Volunteer Program, also known as Get Outdoors Nevada, which recruits volunteers to clean up public lands and work as trail leaders, historians, data-entry clerks, and visitor services assistants. Get Outdoors Nevada acts as a single point of contact for community members searching for volunteer opportunities with the four federal agencies. Last fiscal year, an estimated 2,400 volunteers put in 160,000 hours of work, PLI project manager Donna Grady says. Since launching the program, more than 600 new volunteers have been recruited.
“Volunteers are extremely important, given the growth of Las Vegas and the expected growth over the next 10 to 15 years,” she says. “There’s no way we could do what we’re doing to maintain public lands without them.”
