Thieves,Vandals Chipping Away at Hard-Pressed National Parks

Under the shady cliffs beside a spring at the bottom of a canyon in the Grapevine Mountains, Shoshone Indians once sought respite from Death Valley’s wilting heat and marked their passing by etching images on a room-size slab of granite.

One symbol depicts a bighorn sheep, one a snake, but the rest are difficult to discern, lost to erosion and a blur of modern graffiti including a smiley face, crosses and scribbled initials. A nearby sign warns visitors not to deface the petroglyphs, but people do anyway. Death Valley National Park may be one of the most protected landscapes in the nation, but vandalism and theft of cultural and natural resources are common.

“It’s hard to believe people would deface them,” said Linda Greene, chief of resources management for the park, rubbing the rough-hewn rock carvings. “It illustrates an early way of life, like a page of history. Rock art is, in many cases, art, so this is like slicing through a painting when it’s defaced.”

Loss is not limited to one canyon. Two men were recently arrested for pilfering ancient Indian baskets and tools on the valley’s salt pan. In Copper Canyon, thieves removed blocks of stone containing fossilized footprints. At Devil’s Hole, revelers tossed beer cans and debris into a limestone pond where the desert pupfish is on the brink of extinction.

And near Warm Spring, shooters blast away at mine shafts and historic buildings. A ranger chased away a paramilitary group only to return the next day to find vandals had toppled part of an ore crusher used by gold miners in the 1930s.

The damage to Death Valley is by no means unique. A shortage of money and personnel have helped make national parks and monuments across the country vulnerable to thieves and vandals.

Poachers in California, Texas and Florida have been stripping Joshua Tree, Big Bend and Everglades national parks of snakes and lizards and selling them to pet shops and collectors.

At California’s Mojave National Preserve, rangers broke up a theft ring two years ago that had stolen about 10,000 barrel cacti, which store liquid that wildlife rely on to survive during dry seasons. The thieves sold the cacti to candy makers in Los Angeles.

“About the only thing people don’t steal from the parks is the air. Everything they can get their hands on, they take,” said Park Service special agent Todd Swain.

At Redwood National Park north of Eureka, Calif., nearly 200 incidents of vandalism, arson, theft and burglary were recorded between 1997 and 1999, costing the Park Service $194,000.

“The national parks are as American as mom and apple pie. These are the best of the best, enduring symbols of national unity and pride,” said Jennifer S. Coken, national campaign director for the National Parks Conservation Assn. “Yet we have artifacts, wildlife, cultural resources and buildings being lost. We’ve assumed they are being taken care of, but they are not.”

The campaign that Coken is directing has brought together 200 conservation organizations in an effort to secure more financial backing for the parks from Congress and the White House.

Working with the Park Service, the conservation association has enlisted graduate students at business schools to survey conditions at some of the 385 monuments, parks, preserves and historical sites. The students concluded that the Park Service’s annual operating budget falls short by at least $600 million, or 32%, of what it needs to operate effectively.

Funding for resource management and educational and interpretive services is 40% of the amount needed, the group concluded. Some of the most popular parks, including Yellowstone in Wyoming and Acadia in Maine, are receiving only 30% to 50% of the money needed, the survey found.

During a campaign stop two years ago near Seattle, then-candidate George W. Bush lamented the woeful condition of the national parks, saying they were “in worse shape than ever before” and “at the breaking point.”

Bush cited sewage flows in lakes at Yellowstone, rain leaking through roofs onto Civil War relics, and Anasazi stone structures collapsing at Chaco Cultural National Historical Park in New Mexico. He pledged to erase a $5-billion backlog of maintenance projects.

But so far, Bush’s proposed maintenance budgets for the Park Service haven’t done much to close the gap. The national parks got an additional $61 million this year, and the president has asked for $2 million on top of that next year.

Members of both parties in Congress are urging more. Americans for National Parks is advocating an additional $280 million for the Park Service’s budget in the coming fiscal year.

“The president has made some promises, but the National Park Service came in under budget,” said Republican Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho, a member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “We have dramatically underfunded the Park Service. I’m frustrated. We create these new parks and acreage without providing more money for them,” Craig said.

Instead, nonprofit groups are paying for more and more basic services at national parks. The Yosemite Fund is paying to restore trails at Yosemite National Park. The Yellowstone Park Foundation helps pay for research on gray wolves and is trying to raise $15 million to pay for a new visitor center at Old Faithful. In Colorado, the Anheuser-Busch Co. has funded cleanup crews in Rocky Mountain National Park.

But those private efforts have not kept pace with needs. More people, from the United States and abroad, continue to visit the parks, and Congress continues to add more parkland. About 285 million people visited the parks last year, an increase of 37% over the last 23 years. Total park acreage has more than doubled in that time, according to the Park Service.

Yet today, staffing at national parks is at its lowest level ever relative to the size of the territory and the number of visitors rangers must supervise, said Ken Mabery, president of the Assn. of National Park Rangers.

“Rangers are spending less time in the field so they can do things like fill out paperwork for habitat restoration, prescribed burns, restroom construction and consultation with other agencies,” Mabery said. “People don’t see rangers anymore. We’re not out there to work with parks visitors anymore.”

This summer, Mabery said, one in four rangers are on homeland security detail, guarding dams, the Statue of Liberty and the Liberty Bell, among other things, while others have been pressed into fire prevention duty as blazes scorch the West.

At the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, more than 1,000 archeological sites have not yet been examined by scientists.

At Lassen National Park north of Sacramento, just 5% of the park has been surveyed for archeological resources. “There’s a lot of history we are not learning because these sites aren’t being surveyed,” Coken said.

Grand Canyon National Park is one of the world’s geological wonders, yet it does not have a geologist on its staff.

Rosie the Riveter World War II National Home Front Historical Park was created in Richmond, Calif., two years ago to preserve a shipyard and tell people about the 6 million women who worked in defense industries during the war.

But there is still no money for a visitor center, exhibits or tours.

Back in Death Valley, two or three rangers are typically on duty, patrolling a 3.3-million acre park--nearly as big as Connecticut--most of which is accessible only by four-wheel-drive vehicle.

“We don’t really have the time or staff or resources to fully protect these sites,” said ranger Kyle Nelson, peering at eroded and vandalized petroglyphs from beneath his Smokey Bear hat.

Campers dismantle wood structures at historic mining camps for firewood. Even ore carts, heavy gears and rock crushers, made of iron and steel, disappear. On a recent inspection of the Queen of Sheba mine, rangers patched up bullet holes in the building that once housed miners. The Park Service wants to station someone there to watch over it, but does not have the funds.

“They take bits and pieces and pick away at the fabric of these structures. They are just gradually being ripped apart. This is the mentality we’re dealing with,” said Greene, the park’s chief of resource management, as she stooped to pick up an empty rum bottle and a beer can.

One visitor remarked in a log book at the site that he had seen worse. “Hallelujah!” wrote Sam from Salt Lake City. “A beautiful place in the middle of nowhere that hadn’t been vandalized.”