Q & A: Locking Up Looters
In 2002, an alert park ranger spotted two men loading items into a car parked at Death Valley National Park. After questioning the men, park officials realized they had stumbled across a well-organized looting ring. The discovery led to the creation of Operation Indian Rocks, an anti-looting task force composed of representatives from the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and other federal agencies. In a two-year investigation, the task force recovered more than 11,000 relics - including projectile points, pottery shards, and a human skull-that had been stolen from Death Valley and other public lands in California and Nevada. Earlier this year, key members of the looting ring were convicted of violating the Archaeological Resources Protection Act and have begun serving their sentences. National Parks recently spoke to Dr. Tim Canaday, a former archaeologist with Death Valley who now works at BLM's Klamath Falls Resource Area, about the latest developments in the case and what visitors can do to help.
Q: What made Operation Indian Rocks so successful?
A: Looting is rampant, but most of our staffs are so small that if you come across evidence of looting, it might be hours, days, or months after it occurred. This investigation happened after an observant ranger saw some activity that he realized might have been a problem. It was a fortuitous set of circumstances. Once we did the initial search warrants, we realized that it was far larger than a one-time occurrence, and in order to deal with this we needed to form this team of different agencies and go after them. We put in long hours, and we got results. And in our respective agencies, the managers were all behind us and supported us. One of the goals of this task force was that, once we got the convictions, we would then work to put the word out that looting is occurring and educate the public.
Q: Now that the looters have been prosecuted, what is happening to the recovered relics?
A: We were able to tie the looters to 14 prehistoric sites including the Death Valley site, and the monetary amounts of the damage exceeded more than a half million dollars on those sites. We seized more than 11,000 artifacts. Now that all the court proceedings have been dealt with, we're in the process of going through the artifacts, figuring out whether this projectile point came from this or that public land. We have "site provenance" for some artifacts, but sometimes we just have "area provenance," as in we only know that it came from federal lands. So we've got a lot of artifacts that have some provenance and a number of others that have no provenance. We're in the process of getting those artifacts back to their respective agencies. In the meantime, they've been under the care of Lake Mead National Recreation Area.
Q: What should park visitors do if they suspect that looting is taking place?
A: First of all, if you're visiting a park and you see an artifact on the ground, look at it, enjoy it, and leave it where it is. Secondly, if you see someone acting suspicious-maybe they're digging, maybe they're picking something up-do not confront them. The best thing to do would be to observe them from a distance, take some notes if you have a chance-if you see a license number, that's terrific-and report your observations immediately to a park ranger or to law enforcement.
