Thieves removing history from the wide-open spaces

Linda Farnsworth picked her way across a field of loose rocks, down a steep slope under the overhang of sandstone cliffs. The archaeologist stopped at the remains of a low stone retaining wall and searched briefly until she found the series of backfilled holes — where looters had rooted around a remote kiva site for highly prized black and white Anasazi pots, tools and other prehistoric objects.

Although Farnsworth and other officials of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the monument, suspect that the looters scored a valuable haul from the site, they can't back up their hunch.

"I have no idea," said Farnsworth, the BLM's sole archaeologist at Canyons of the Ancients in Colorado's southwest corner.

Farnsworth and other officials can't say what's missing because they know so little about what was there. Only about 18 percent of Canyons of the Ancients has been inventoried to assess historic, cultural or scientific values. That's more than the BLM knows about a great many of the places it administers. Less than 6 percent of the 262 million acres managed by the agency has been inventoried for cultural resources.

Although about 263,000 cultural properties have been documented, some archeologists calculate there are more than 4 million sites across the BLM's lands in the West.

With 100 archaeological sites per square mile, Canyons of the Ancients is regarded as the richest trove in an area famous for its remnants of American prehistory. Yet it has only one law enforcement officer to police the monument's 250 square miles.

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.

A study released this summer by the National Trust for Historic Preservation determined that the BLM was too cash-strapped and understaffed to meet the challenge.

The report by the National Trust highlights the disparity in funding between the two land management agencies within the Interior Department: the BLM and the National Park Service. The park service administers Mesa Verde National Park, about 20 miles southeast of Canyons of the Ancients.

There, funding averages about $19 an acre. In contrast, Canyons of the Ancients operates at $2.27 an acre, though it is three times larger than Mesa Verde.

According to monument manager LouAnn Jacobson, more than 30 percent of Canyons' budget is funded through grants or gifts.

The National Trust report notes that in 2004 the park service spent $74 million on cultural resource management, though the BLM's 2006 budget for the same kind of work is $15 million. Recently, the Bush administration recommended a $5 million cut to the budget of the BLM's National Landscape Conservation System.

Critics of the BLM say the agency seldom pays for an inventory of its land until it is a candidate for energy leasing, when proposed surface disturbances are required to be studied. But Sally Wisely, the Colorado state BLM director, said protecting far-flung resources cannot be achieved with money alone.

"Even if we had a whole lot of additional resources, the nature of public lands in the West makes it difficult and challenging to protect," Wisely said. "The ultimate answer is an individual stewardship ethic, with every individual understanding what these resources are and what they mean to us. It means people behaving themselves out there and keeping themselves to a higher standard."

But agency officials conceded that people had been behaving badly.