State historic office launches anti-vandalism campaign, seeks volunteer 'site stewards'

Speaker 2, an unidentified speaker, said the Utah Legislature has tasked the State Historic Preservation Office with a statewide archaeological anti-vandalism campaign aimed at preventing damage to the state's archaeological and cultural resources.

The campaign, presenters said, will focus in its first year on the recreation community and on recruiting volunteers to monitor sites. "This first year, we're really gonna focus on the recreation community," Speaker 3 said, describing an outreach strategy that targets people who already use public lands.

Speakers described rising damage to rock art and monuments. "We're finding that, the vandalism is increasing and it's a real problem," Speaker 3 said, raising the question of why people deface or remove cultural materials. Presenters urged visitors to adopt stewardship behaviors: "You respect these objects. You, you don't deface them. You don't pick them up," Speaker 3 said.

Speaker 2 outlined the volunteer component: "One of the best ways that people can get involved is to become a Utah cultural site steward," the speaker said, adding that stewards are volunteers who "donate their time to go out and to monitor archaeological and cultural resources and report back any damages or changes that they see." The presenters said volunteers are intended to supplement, not replace, professional land managers; Speaker 2 noted the state currently lacks enough land managers "to even cover a fraction of the archaeological and cultural sites that are out there." When exact staffing shortfalls were mentioned, speakers did not provide numeric counts.

Presenters framed the work as protecting shared heritage and Utah's sense of place. "You can't put a price on archaeology. It's priceless," Speaker 3 said, adding that the effort is about safeguarding cultural history "for people in the future." No formal votes or resolutions were recorded in the transcript; speakers described the campaign and a volunteer program but did not report statutory citations or appropriation amounts in this session.

Next steps described in the presentation centered on outreach to recreational users and recruitment of volunteer site stewards; speakers did not give timelines or specific funding details during the recorded remarks.