USA Today
Jan. 23, 2008 04:32 PM
Looting of archaeological artifacts and fossils from national parks is
increasing as the demand for such items rises on the Internet and the world
market, U.S. National Park Service officials say.

About 340 looting incidents considered "significant" are reported each year
at the 391 national parks, monuments, historic sites and battlefields -
probably less than 25 percent of the actual number of violations, says
National Park Service staff ranger Greg Lawler. "The trends are up," he
says.

"The theft of archaeological and paleontological resources is a chronic
problem that we simply have not even been able to get a grasp on," says Mark
Gorman, chief ranger at South Dakota's Badlands National Park. "There's just
insufficient resources."

Park service investigators search Web sites for looted artifacts and the FBI
helps track items, some of which make their way to collectors in Europe and
Asia. Prices are increasing for some items, including Native American
pottery and garments, says Bonnie Magness-Gardiner, manager of the FBI's art
theft program.

The most coveted items can cost "in the tens of thousands, sometimes
hundreds of thousands of dollars," she says. Thieves caught last year at
Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park sold a Confederate
belt buckle for $3,300 and buttons for $200 each.

The park service has 1,500 law enforcement rangers and 400 seasonal rangers
- one for about every 56,000 acres. "We really don't have enough manpower,"
Lawler says.

That can make it difficult to catch criminals such as the three men who dug
460 holes at the Fredericksburg-Spotsylvania military park in search of
artifacts and the man who pleaded guilty to taking 252 relics last year from
Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park.

Under the 1979 Archaeological Resources Protection Act, first-time felony
offenders can be fined up to $20,000 and imprisoned for a year.

Todd Swain, a National Park Service special agent, says the problem is far
worse than statistics show. In a report he wrote for the 2007 "Yearbook of
Cultural Property Law " he concluded, "The true scope of the looting problem
is staggering. ... Our shared cultural heritage is disappearing before our
eyes."