My wife, Cathie, and I live in the northwest corner of Montana at the foot of snow-capped mountains, some rising 8,000 feet above the valley. Our homeland is one of lush rainforests, freshets gushing from glacial-carved ridges and moist Pacific clouds clipping along like sailing ships on an ocean of sky.

Coming from such a place it still intrigues me that a decade ago we turned our creative gaze toward the aired deserts and deep canyons of the Southwest.

We are both professional photographers and I, a nature writer. In the beginning, I suppose we were attracted to the vast difference between two breathtaking landscapes. However, as time went on and thousands of miles were added to the odometer, our original vision of the Southwest began to change. Here is a backdrop dominated not only by the natural beauty of deserts and canyon lands stretching from horizon to horizon but also wealthy in ancient artifacts and the markings of long vanished hunter gathers. It was then that we came to realize the true beauty of the Southwest is as much cultural as eye-catching.

You simply can't spend time in the Four Corners region without sensing the presence of the ancient ones - even if you are somehow able to overlook thousands of prehistoric ruins, fields of bones and shattered pottery or the haunting message of petroglyphs and pictographs etched on the sandstone face of much of the landscape. 

The first couple dozen ruins and rock art panels we visited stood out like a photographer's dream. More times than not, we found them off the beaten path - far removed from any visitor center, paved road or display cabinets hovered over by naturalists in training.

The early places of antiquity dripped with authenticity and spiritual presence revealing the rituals of shamans, huntsmen, or the imaginary whisper of chanting voices coming from ceremonial kivas.

It was late autumn during our first year in the Southwest when we drove to a rock art panel a few miles off the highway. The site included three distinct art forms portraying the passage of centuries as well as separate cultures spanning prehistoric Fremont onward to the historic Ute, the direct ancestors of Native Americans among us today. The sandstone canvas displaying the art arched around a brushy arroyo and pressed inward like huge muscular arms holding an entire heritage above autumn shrubs and bushes. Nowhere had we viewed such a diverse display of ancient culture portrayed so prominently on a particular countryside. And nowhere had we witnessed such random and shameful acts of vandalism.

Across the dirt road stood a fourth panel, where in the true form of Fremont art, ghostly figures appeared to rise ominously from the texture of stone itself. Here the head and torso of the eerie figures were pockmarked by bullet holes and despoiled with modern paint - a tasteless and disgraceful message from yet another culture.

The more we traveled after that morning in Utah, the more aware we became of the awful effects of vandalism on the vulnerable archeological treasures of the Southwest. The acts not only appeared on sites well off the road, but to our surprise, on accessible sites under the protective stewardship of the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management. A serious sense of concern overwhelmed our later visits as we hiked into remote areas and asked ourselves where was the law enforcement presence, the backcountry ranger or naturalist employed to guard against vandalism?

Several times we asked at visitor centers about the absence of backcountry rangers and generally got a similar response, "our funding is very competitive or has been cut" or "we just don't have the staff to provide a significant backcountry presence."

In 2000, under the able leadership of Bruce Babbitt, director of the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Land Management was assigned a new conservation role for a number of significant ecological and cultural sites spread across the west. Several of those important sites, which comprise the National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS), are located within the geographic footprint of the Four Corners. The important sites included in the NLCS were singled out with preservation as the key management component for the new BLM paradigm.

Each site included in the NLCS system had been selected specifically for its ecological wholesomeness, wild character or vast complement of historical and archaeological assets deemed irreplaceable given their role in the cultural identity of our nation. Contained in the region are sites like Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, El Malpais in New Mexico, Gunnison Gorge and Canyons of the Ancients in Colorado, and Agua Fria and Grand Canyon-Parashant in Arizona.

In its assessment of how well the NLCS sites had been protected and managed by the BLM over the first five years, the Wilderness Society in 2005 handed the federal agency an embarrassing report card. The society's assessment should serve as a stern wake up call for both the federal agency and the American public.

In its opening remarks concerning BLM's performance, the Wilderness Society praised the agency's field personnel who seemed on most occasions to do the impossible with the meager funds allowed by agency headquarters.

From the onset, the mission of the NLCS has been, "to conserve, protect, and restore these nationally significant landscapes that have outstanding cultural, ecological and scientific values for the benefit of current and future generations."

What actually happened over the first five years is staggering in light of the agency's clear mandate. One of the first things the watchdog group found was that many of the sites had a minimum of staff and all the sites clearly demonstrated serious lacking when it came to law enforcement and resource protection. What managers were employed within the NLCS sites, almost none had line authority to direct the work of others and in only Grand Staircase-Escalante did the manager sit on the state-wide BLM management team. Equally embarrassing to the NLCS program was the allocation of the agency's annual $1.8 billion budget. Of that significant amount, a scant 2.5 percent went to the prestigious NLCS sites which by themselves make up 10 percent of the entire geographic jurisdiction of the agency. The lack of funding from headquarters had a direct affect on the protection of a countless number of prehistoric rock art and ruin sites under the jurisdiction of the BLM in the west.

Hamstrung by budget inadequacies, law enforcement rangers were oftentimes responsible for the geographic coverage consisting of hundreds of thousands of rugged acres thatched by hundreds of miles of backcountry roads. Compounding the problem of coverage was the fact that the same rangers were suddenly responsible for an explosion in visitorship once NLCS sites became well known.

Grand Canyon-Parashant in Arizona and El Malpais in New Mexico are two good examples. According to the assessment, the Arizona site is made up of 807,241 acres and receives over 44,000 visitors a year. Yet the huge site was patrolled by only two full-time law enforcement rangers. Grand Canyon-Parashant contains 845 known cultural and historic sites with only 3 percent of its geographic footprint inventoried at the time the Wilderness Society's made its assessment.

 At El Malpais, the reported statistics grew even more alarming. Over a geographic region of 226,000 acres, El Malpais reported 571 known cultural or historic sites with only 4 percent of the reserve inventoried. The site receives 142,545 visitors annually, and at the time of the assessment it employed only a half-time law-enforcement ranger responsible for a rugged terrain literally veined by backcountry roads.

On average, each ranger assigned to the NLCS sites under the review of the Wilderness Society was required to patrol 200,000 acres . . . "making it impossible to check remote areas or specific sites regularly," says the 2005 assessment.

In a 1999 article appearing in the New York Times, National Park Service ranger Chuck Dorn reported that according to recorded studies, as much as 12 tons of prehistoric petrified wood is somehow smuggled out of the Petrified Forest National Park each year. This and other staggering reports of theft and vandalism have plagued the National Park Service for decades and includes one serious case of vandalism reported by the Associated Press in 2002. In the nationwide coverage, National Park law enforcement personnel reported heavy damage on the Lomaki Ruins which, according to the article, contains remnants of a 12th-century Anasazi village. By all accounts, Lomaki Ruins is truly one of our nation's most beautiful ruins. Stone walls were smashed and toppled along with major damage to 800-year-old granaries nearby.

Unlike the remote sites under the jurisdiction of the BLM, Lomaki Ruins is located only a few hundred yards from a paved parking lot at Wupatki National Monument. Here is a national monument comprised of approximately 35,000 acres with 98 percent of its lands inaccessible to the public. The monument closes at sunset and does not reopen until sunrise; still, dreadful acts of vandalism continue to take place. Communications officer Karen Breslin with the National Park Service Intermountain Region headquarters responded recently when asked about the Wupatki incident. She reported that five law-enforcement rangers are assigned to the Flagstaff sites, which include Wupatki, Sunset Crater and Walnut Canyon. When asked to provide the law enforcement availability at the time of the incident at Lomaki Ruins, silence was the response.

NPS Intermountain headquarters did however provide several pages of statistics which help portray its recent level of commitment with regard to the cultural and archeological treasures under their jurisdiction.

In 2004, for example, a total of $904,407 was spent to provide protection for archeological and cultural sites throughout the region. A year later, the sum increased slightly to $908,018. But in 2006, spending dropped significantly to $764,098.

What is more concerning about the agency statistics, than decreased spending, is the number of reported incidents of vandalism, which steadily increased from 214 in 2004 to 272 in 2006. Also, the number of citations handed to vandals in 2004 and 2005 were substantially higher than those written in 2006. When asked about backcountry patrolling or law-enforcement presence within Southwest monuments and parks under NPS stewardship, the agency failed to provide statistics or make official comment. 

Some of our nation's most-valued resources fall under the guardianship of the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service. Both agencies are assigned some level of responsibility under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which has at its foundation the protection of irreplaceable treasures including thousands spread across the geography of the American Southwest.

The very creation of the Antiquities Act was inspired by theft and vandalism observed by Adolph Francis Bandelier during his first visit to New Mexico's Pecos Ruins in 1880. The entire protective premise under which the Act was formulated comes from the sites Cathie and I observed so cautiously during the time we worked in the Southwest. What we observed during our visits supported by our recent research paints a pretty serious picture for the future of important sites in the Four Corners. But the story doesn't stop there.

In 2007, after finishing our work in the desert, we had the chance to visit the historic site where famed Chief Joseph surrendered his beleaguered Nez Perce following to Col. Nelson A. Miles. The site not only recalls the surrender of the Nez Perce but celebrates their epic flight across the northwest and their final stand in the Montana hill country.

The solemn setting, known officially as the Bear Paw Battlefield, is located in a secluded meadow in the Bear Paw Mountains along Snake Creek. Some years before, out of respect for the historic event and the incredible suffering of the Nez Perce people, a bronze plaque had been affixed to a huge, stalwart boulder. The beautiful plaque depicts the famous chief standing before the Calvary officer with arms outstretched. Bullet holes pock the bronze body of Chief Joseph and serve as yet another contemporary reminder. Sadly, it seems as long as we are allowed to access important places of history and antiquity there will be among us a few heartless individuals who for some inconceivable reason find it necessary to defile their own heritage.

Gordon Sullivan is a freelance writer living in Northwest Montana. His latest book, Saving Homewaters, is due for release from Norton-Countryman Press in April. Gordon and Cathie Sullivan are professional photographers.

To read the entire Wilderness Society's assessment of the BLM, go online to State of the National Landscape Conservation System. To contact the National Park Service Intermountain Region, call (303) 969-2707 or ask your local ranger how much time is allocated to backcountry monitoring of ancient sites or special environments in your area.