It is, strictly speaking, a question of dollars and cents, for absent the political will to dramatically increase funding for the Bureau of Land Management program to inventory and safeguard this irreplaceable cultural heritage, it will inevitably be lost to the ravages of thieves, vandals, oil and gas exploration, unmanaged grazing and, not least, the explosion in all-terrain vehicle use that is largely unregulated and uncontrolled.
That is the inescapable conclusion of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which this week published a sobering study of the growing threat to the cultural treasures that abound on the 261 million acres of federal land the BLM manages, mostly in 11 Western states, including nearly 23 million acres in Utah.
Chronic underfunding has meant that only about 17 million acres have even been inventoried or surveyed for their cultural resources, as mandated by law. Yet even that 6 percent of the total has yielded discovery of 263,000 cultural properties, 90 percent of which are Native American archaeological sites dating from up to 13,000 years ago.
Until recently, this ancient treasure has been protected by its inaccessibility to most recreationists. But that protection has been erased by off-road vehicles and mountain bikes capable of going just about anywhere. The BLM has no comprehensive regulatory framework for managing the ORV onslaught, or the resources to minimize its impacts on natural and cultural resources.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation - at http://www.nationaltrust.org/public lands/NTHP BLM Report.pdf - offers sound recommendations for addressing the problem, including increasing funding for cultural resource management over five years from $15 million to $50 million annually.
Unfortunately, without pressure from Western congressional representatives and their constituents, it is unlikely the Bush administration and Congress will take the necessary steps to preserve this priceless cultural legacy. In other words, the responsibility falls on all of us to see that they do.
