The Bureau of Land Management in Utah arrested a woman Saturday who’s suspected of vandalizing a petroglyph at the Wire Pass Trail in Kane County.
The petroglyph panel the woman is accused of defacing on Nov. 23 is sacred to Native Americans, said Harry Barber, the BLM’s Paria River District manager.
“This destructive behavior has lasting consequences that can never be made 100% whole again,” the agency said in a Facebook post about the act.
Barber said that when someone started vandalizing the petroglyph, other quickly noticed and told her that what she was doing was wrong.
“The individual went on to keep doing what she was doing,” Barber said. “The public took pictures.”
Those pictures were then given to the BLM, Barber said, and agency law enforcement worked with the Kane County Sheriff’s Office to “put the pieces together and successfully make an arrest.”
“I really, really appreciate public lands,” Barber said. “It’s bothersome when people take things into their own hands and feel like they can do things that are not lawful — in this case, writing their names and other things on a petroglyph panel.”
According to the BLM, in cases similar to the vandalism, “it is typical to see felony charges related to the violation of the Archeological Resource Protection Act.”
