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The Journal article “Petroglyphs Torn from Sacred Site” published Nov. 21 describes severe vandalism along the BLM Petroglyph Loop car tour near Bishop, Calif. Using rock saws, thieves made away with petroglyphs sacred to Paiute tribes.

Theft was made easy by uncontrolled parking access adjacent to the petroglyphs. Clearly the BLM should close the road, solicit advice from the Paiutes, and move parking further away.

In New Mexico, sacred landscapes with rock art include the Navajo Dinetah southeast of Bloomfield and Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque, which is sacred to many pueblo tribes.

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Both suffer from uncontrolled access of different types. The Dinetah, identified with Navajo origins, is crisscrossed by a labyrinth of roads for oil and gas drilling which have given thieves disastrous access to the rock art. Magnificent paintings have been sawed away from the rock.

Three years ago, I was leading my annual Southwest Anthropology field study class into Petroglyph National Monument. My students and I were viewing a magnificent petroglyph panel in Rinconada Canyon, when, startled by the sudden appearance of three joggers, one of them knocked me on my back. “You shouldn’t block the trail,” he shouted back.

Jogging and dog walking clearly are unrelated to, and distracting from, the purposes for which the monument was established. They add unnecessarily to the crush of over 100,000 visitors a year.

Because of largely uncontrolled access, numerous petroglyphs have accumulated disfiguring scratches and graffiti. Together with unlimited proliferation of trails, the very resources which the monument was established to protect are degraded.

The 1990 Establishment Act of Congress designated portions of the Petroglyph National Monument to be cooperatively managed by the National Park Service and the city of Albuquerque under the same federal laws and regulations applicable to all other units of the National Park System. Congress mandated this arrangement after years of planning and many public hearings.

But today, only the park service’s Atrisco Unit is managed in this way.

The city-managed Boca Negra and Piedras Marcadas units are managed much the same as any other city open space.

This outcome is in direct violation of the congressional legislation establishing the monument. Efforts to discuss a solution have so far been refused by Mayor Richard Berry.

As a member of the Petroglyph National Monument Advisory Management Commission, I remember that we unanimously voted against including recreational uses. All 19 pueblo tribes, in their written comments, also opposed active recreational uses. But the monument superintendent admonished our commission of eight experts that we only had advisory status, and proceeded to reverse our unanimous decision.

Even mountain biking and horse riding trails were approved for parts of the monument. Comments from the pueblos were essentially ignored.

Nowhere in the legislative history of the monument did Congress direct that it should become an urban recreation area. The General Management Plan, after failing for over 20 years, clearly needs to be revised.

So these three spiritually active landscapes, Petroglyph National Monument, the Bishop Paiute sites and the Navajo Dinetah, are plagued with a common problem: uncontrolled access.

These sacred areas are life-giving links to our shared heritage as human beings. If they are lost to, as Tony Hillerman said, “the thieves of time,” then, as a famous Elizabethan poet, John Donne, warned, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.”

Let’s work together now to better protect Petroglyph National Monument before it is too late. Mayor Berry, will you help?

Harvard Ayers has led a spring semester field trip that includes Petroglyph National Monument for over 25 years.