Fossils becoming bones of contention; Agencies try to balance access, protection from theft

Ed Timms

September 7, 1994

CHADRON, Neb. - Barbara Beasley walked past the fossil remains of turtles, scattered across the bleached clay soil like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. She stopped a few times to contemplate a chunk of fossilized bone. The fossil wealth in the remote badlands and grasslands of northwestern Nebraska is well-known to scientists, who have made important discoveries there for many decades. It attracts tourists.

And it attracts poachers in search of fossils that can command six-figure black-market prices.

Dinosaurs are hot. Blame it, perhaps, on that purple TV personality who looks like the love child of Godzilla and the Pillsbury Doughboy. Or the screamfest that Steven Spielberg created with Jurassic Park and the novel by Michael Crichton that inspired it.

"A lot of times, we find out that's something been taken because we find a hole," said Ms. Beasley, a U.S. Forest Service paleontologist. Scaling the steep slope of a wind-whipped hill, she came to a hole about 10 feet wide.

"Normally, the holes haven't been filled back," she said. "And a lot of times tools have been left - shovels, picks, dental picks, paint brushes, trowels, you name it."

Theft is only one of several issues confronting officials with the federal agencies that oversee vast expanses of government-owned lands in the fossil-rich West and Midwest.

TAKING ACTION

Fossils that have rewritten the textbooks have been excavated from public lands by scientists for many decades. Yet only in recent years have officials started viewing fossils as a resource that should be protected and managed, like wildlife, minerals or archaeological artifacts.

The agencies are trying to balance protection of fossils on public lands - especially rare and scientifically important specimens - and public access to them.

What's out there, how much and how much has been lost are all question marks. Comprehensive surveys also are a relatively new.

A 1991 survey, for example, found evidence of illegal vertebrate fossil collecting on 20 percent of 30,720 acres in Nebraska's Oglala National Grasslands. Vertebrate fossils include dinosaurs, those most in demand among collectors.

The Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management permit some collection of invertebrate fossils, such as plants and shellfish.

There are restrictions: The fossils must be on the surface. Only small amounts can be taken, and not for commercial purposes.

SEEKING RESTRICTIONS

As federal agencies study the issue, amateurs and commercial collectors seek to legally collect a broader variety of fossils, and more of them. Meanwhile, some academicians and scientists push for more stringent curbs, whether the fossils are obtained from public or private property.

"The reason there is so much concern about this is because we've got a part of our national heritage here," said Brent Breithaupt, curator of the University of Wyoming Geological Museum.

"These are naturally occurring, nonrenewable scientific and educational resources. They have an important story to be told, and unfortunately we're seeing parts of that story, like chapters in a book, disappearing."

Wherever they are found, fossils can bring in big bucks. The skeleton of a three-horned triceratops has been advertised for $ 150,000, a prehistoric cave bear skeleton for $ 50,000.

"A lot of the big-money items appear to be going overseas. . . . the things that are going for hundreds of thousands or more," Mr. Breithaupt said.

Federal agencies have but a handful of law enforcement officers to patrol millions of acres. Theft of a fossil valued at more than $ 100 can be prosecuted as a felony, but few cases come to trial.

"There's certainly evidence out there in the field that large-scale collecting on public land is going on, and we just haven't managed to solve the cases or identify the folks who are doing it," said David Kubichek, an assistant U.S. attorney in Casper, Wyo.

"We've got a lot of land," he added, "and it's relatively easy for people to go out and not get caught."

SPREAD THIN

In Wyoming, for example, the Bureau of Land Management oversees about 18 million acres. Its law enforcement staff consists of three special agents and three uniformed rangers with a broad range of duties.

Two U.S. Forest Service law enforcement rangers with the National Forest system in Nebraska, also with an array of duties, patrol a million acres in Nebraska and South Dakota.

Terri Liestman, a Forest Service official in Denver, has long pushed for better management of fossil resources on public lands, including the prevention of theft. She first found evidence of fossil thefts several years ago, "huge holes in the ground, holes that you could put a Chevy truck in."

The thefts, Ms. Liestman said, apparently continue.

"We have reports, some of them are confirmed and some of them are unconfirmed, of flatbed tucks coming into the badlands," she said. "We have reports of concrete saws. We have reports of helicopters coming in. This is high-tech stuff."

Ms. Beasley said that not all of the unauthorized removal of fossils can be blamed on unscrupulous commercial collectors.

"It's not just commercial, it's not just amateurs," she said.

"There's also probably professionals out there who just don't think they have to get permission. There are those who have the attitude that they spent a lot of time and money becoming paleontologists, and therefore they have a right."

WIDE OPEN SPACES

Other factors favor poachers besides the West's open spaces and thin law enforcement presence. Mining and prospecting trails crisscross some public lands, offering access to - and exits from - a fossil dig.

Much of the land is defined by the government as "multiple-use."

A four-wheel drive vehicle carrying digging tools isn't necessarily suspicious; prospecting, for example, is legal in many areas.

Sometimes, boundaries are nebulous. Ranchers have long-standing government grazing permits. Fence lines don't follow property lines.

Ranchers fence in usable range but not the kind of barren terrain where fossils often are found, so unfenced private property lies next to unfenced federal property.

In one case, U.S. Assistant Attorney Kubichek recalled, a Swiss firm got permission from a landowner to excavate on his property.

"They came up with a beautiful, perfectly articulated and preserved allosaurus fossil (a meat-eating dinosaur) . . . which turned out to be on public land," he said. "Needless to say we did not prosecute that case. There was no intent . . . it looked like it was on private land."

PRESERVATION BILL

At least some of the decisions about fossils on public land ultimately may be made in Washington.

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., is seeking support for a bill aimed at preserving fossil resources. It would, in essence, bar collection of fossils for commercial purposes off public land and would provide stiff criminal and civil penalties.The American Lands Access Association, a lobbying group representing commercial and amateur collectors, has offered its own legislation. It would allow commercial collectors to excavate vertebrate fossils on public land with a permit. But "significant paleontological discoveries" would have to be reported and museums given "first-right-of-refusal" to purchase such finds.

Many commercial collectors argue that keeping them off public lands and overzealous restrictions on amateurs is selfish, wasteful and counterproductive.

"Amateurs and commercial collectors are the people who make nearly all the major finds in the science of paleontology, which makes sense - there are more of them and they're out there," said Marion Zenker, who works for the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, a private company in Hill City, S.D., that excavates and sells fossils.

The institute, which has excavated fossils that are displayed in museums around the world, has been a leading advocate for commercial collecting on public lands. It is perhaps best known for its discovery of " Sue, " described as the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever found.

SKELETON SEIZED

Institute president Peter Larson paid $ 5,000 to a ranch owner on South Dakota's Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation to excavate the skeleton in 1992.

The skeleton was later seized by FBI agents and National Guardsman, along with other fossils and institute records.

Government attorneys contended that the fossil was improperly removed.

Mr. Larson and the institute now face a trial in November on charges of illegally hunting fossils on federal lands and other offenses. The defendants deny the charges and are appealing seizure of the tyrannosaurus skeleton.

Ms. Zenker said she believed that the company became a lightning rod for government wrath because of its worldwide reputation as a "paleontological prep house."

"We were very vocal and active in the battle to get equitable, enforceable regulations for fossil collecting on public land for everyone," she said.

OPEN UP

Rynn Hollrah says he legally collects fossils from private land, but he'd like to see public land opened up to commercial operators.

His family operates a small grocery store-rock shop-RV park near the gates of Chadron State Park in northwestern Nebraska. They cut timber for the Forest Service and collect fossils commercially on private land.

"The . . . fossils in this area weather out constantly from the wind and rain and erosion," said Mr. Hollrah, 35. "And once they become exposed, they can fall apart in a matter of months."

Most museums, he said, have far more specimens than they can display and have no interest in common fossils.

"They have basements and warehouses full of stuff they don't display and they don't study," he said. "The museums and the government people don't have enough manpower to got out and excavate."

Mr. Hollrah, whose knowledge of paleontology is self-taught, said he wouldn't oppose a permit process for the removal of vertebrate fossils. But he also fears the fossil-collection controversy threatens to destroy the once-collegial relationship among academics, amateurs and commercial collectors.

He has collaborated closely with university paleontologists, he said, and wants significant finds studied, regardless of who discovered them.

"Everybody needs to work together," he said.