Agency struggles to stop artifact theft By JULIE CART, Los Angeles Times

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 archeological sites per square mile, Canyons of the Ancients is regarded as the richest trove in an area famous for its remnants of American prehistory — the Four Corners region of Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. Yet Canyons of the Ancients 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.