In the discord between Western
metal detector hobbyists and the U.S. Forest Service,
there's no shortage of solutions offered. True, the proposed answers from each
side usually have to do with the other side seeing the
error of its ways -- or at least behaving better. But as the conflict begins to be
explored, there may be the faint outlines visible of some
possible middle ground. Dick Markley, top archaeologist for
the Tahoe National Forest, acknowledges that the very
structure of the U.S. Forest Service -- unelected
bureaucrats administering great chunks of Western lands
and answerable only to other faceless bureaucrats on the
other side of the country -- is a problem for communities
in the West. Yet he still finds it puzzling that
many Westerners don't automatically come and ask for
instructions before going into national forests with
their metal detectors. That, he thinks, would be a big
help. "I think the general principle
is," he says, "if someone is going to go out
and pursue a general activity, a hobby -- whether it's
motorcycle riding, metal detecting, or rock collecting,
or what have you -- they bear the responsibility to go
find out what are the rules governing their activity. "Are there any open areas that
are open, or closed; are there any requirements?" In Markley's view, "the
responsibility ...falls on the person who is going to go
out and do that activity, to go inquire and find out,
'where are the areas I can do this; what are their rules
regarding it?' On the other hand, Ron Stockman, who
runs the non-profit Mother Lode Research Center and is
active in the defense of detectorist rights, sees the
fundamental problem as the Forest Service's unwillingness
to actually tell hobbyists where they should not go. "Say you're a detectorist, and
you go in there [to a ranger headquarters] on a Saturday
morning, and you're very open and honest, and you say
'Look, I'm up here to do some detecting; I don't want to
get into any archaeological or historical sites. Can you
tell me where to go?' "What happens is, they will say
-- this has been the normal case -- they will say, 'We
can't tell you that.' And you as a detectorist, might
say, 'Well, I'm trying to stay out of the areas.' "'Well, if we tell you the
areas where you can go, then you will be able to figure
out the areas where you're not supposed to be in, and
you'll go there.' Markley admits the Tahoe National
Forest is reluctant to identify "no-go" areas.
However, he doesn't seem to register the apparent
conflict between that posture and the requirement that
detectorists find out where they should not go. "We have not identified areas
that are closed to metal detectors, mainly because there
are a lot of legitimate uses for metal detectors, and so
we've resisted closing any areas," he says. "But the burden falls upon the
detectorist to know what the rules are, and to know that
if they get into old mining sites, and old cabin sites,
and anything that might be historical, it's incumbent on
them to find out whether or not that is something that is
a historical site and therefore off limits, or it's
something that they can continue to work in. "And too, if we were to put a
list of all the places that are closed, that's just an
open invitation. Those are the places that obviously are
going to be a treasure map for people to go to, to go dig
into archaeological sites." If Forest Service policy is
self-contradictory, Ron Stockman thinks it's
intentionally so. "You really have to look at the
policy they have in place [to see] why they can't have
the public find out about it," he says. "If they come out and say,
'Yes, we consider every cabin a site, whatever,
whatever,' they know what that's going to sound like to
the public." So Stockman doesn't expect the
Forest Service to make any changes in its policy on its
own. In his view, it's up to detectorists and folks like
himself to get the public to understand what is going on
in the national forests. That, he thinks, would be a big
step forward. "One of the things we always
try to get people to understand is part of the basic
human makeup. Let's face facts; most of us, if we didn't
have to put up with something, we'd just as soon NOT put
up with it. "Well, the Forest Service
people are no different. They want to go out there and
they want to do their job and they don't want to be
bothered. And the archaeologists, and historians, want it
all to themselves. So actually, it's not that they're
really such big bad people, it's just that it ... makes
lands easier to manage if you don't have to put up with
one particular group. No matter what that group is, it
just makes it easier for you to manage." As part of its public education
campaign, Stockman's Mother Lode Research Center is
asking detectorist groups all over America to get their
local Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management
officials to answer a specific list
of questions about their archaeological site
policies. "We already know there are
problems all over the country," says Stockman.
"We already know who's causing them and why. And
what we want to do is put together a national record,
before we go to Washington to show lawmakers up there
what's going on here." When friendly lawmakers in
Washington, D.C. see this is a severe nationwide problem,
he says, "we can move to have policy changes made in
the public land management agencies -- and more or less
curtail the power that the archaeologists and historians
have, which is really running amuck." In mid-September, officers of Reno's
Silver State Treasure Hunters club wrote John Skinner,
supervisor of the Tahoe National Forest, and asked for
written answers to the MLRC list of ten questions. In
mid-October Skinner's office responded, saying it was
working on the list. "We've sent them a note,"
archaeologist Markley told Electric Nevada ,
"and said, 'Bear with us; we're putting together the
information for you.'" Louis Test, the attorney who
represented "John," the detectorist whose story
was told in installments one
and two of this series, says
that both the Forest Service and the hobbyists need to
directly focus on the problem. Right now, he says, the Forest
Service is "gun shy" because of the avalanche
of protests that came in when Stockman put out word on
the Internet of what the Forest Service was doing in the
case of "John." Nevertheless, the federal agency
should follow through with pledges they made to develop
informational programs so the people know "what they
can or can't do, out there in the field," he says. Although Test's client, wanting to
end his case as soon as possible, chose to plead no
contest, the attorney believes the Forest Service would
be well-advised to re-draft its key regulations, if it
ever hopes to win a case actually fought in the courts. For one thing, in the current Forest
Service system, "there is no real determination of
what is, or is not, of historical significance," and
for another, "these archeological sites are not
marked. "So how can a person identify
whether he's out there picking up something of historical
significance if he has no idea he's in a historical
area?" Test acknowledges "the Forest
Service is kind of caught between a rock and a hard spot:
they're worried about people going out and plundering
these sites...if they specifically identify them as ...
archaelogical site[s]. "Those are the bad guys; people
shouldn't go out and do that. But by the same token, you
can't put up a sign that says, 'No bulldozer, no tractor
activity, in this area' and expect people to realize that
that's an archaelogical area." Another reasonable >change, he
says, would be to allow for warnings, sometimes, rather
than citations. "The Forest Service doesn't
really have any 
warning procedures, where they could issue, like, a
warning ticket and say, 'If you do this, this is a
possible violation of federal rule 611 or 616,' you know,
or whatever it may be, so that people are cautious in the
future. The only thing the Forest Service can do now is
issue a citation," he says.
That situation contributes to
polarization between hobbyists and the federal agency
because "you have some law enforcement officers out
there that, I think, don't have a problem issuing
citations when people make a minor mistake or
error..."
"I don't think Congress
intended the regulations to be written in that form...
And I think they should be changed, or clarified."
Test says that even within the
Forest Service itself there are many misconceptions
"as to what can or cannot be done." Therefore,
he says, the Forest Service needs to educate not only the
public but its own people.
To make sure the Forest Service
actually makes such needed reforms, says the attorney,
people who are concerned will probably have to do
something.
"I'm encouraging people to get
more involved with these programs the Forest Service is
talking about -- because if you don't like what they're
doing, and you feel they are encroaching upon our
freedoms to use the public lands, then you can go back to
your legislators and say, 'Here it is; I experienced it
first hand.'"
Test narrated a possible
conversation a citizen could have on the issue with
Nevada's U.S. Senator Richard Bryan:
"'Dick, when you were growing
up in Las Vegas, or when you were up here in Reno, you
didn't worry about whether you picked up a pine cone when
you were out in the forest. But now we got to worry about
that. And I don't think that's what you intended. I don't
think there's a lot of people in the Forest Service who
intended it that way, but some of them are interpreting
it that way.'
"'So let's get back to .. the
medium ground that's made this country great, and not the
polarization on each end of it, because somebody's
stretching the law to fit their own needs, and not the
needs of the public.'"
Markley, the Tahoe National Forest's
top archaeologist, says he, too, regrets the polarization
that has occurred. Alive to the feeling of detectorists
that they are being shut out of the forests, he speaks
almost wistfully of a day when some areas might be
certified as okay for the hobbyists.
"What I'd really like to see
eventually someday -- and I'm not really sure how we
could do it -- would be to actually designate areas for
metal detecting," he told Electric Nevada.
"I mean. there are
archaeological sites where we have gone in and done our
archaeological work and determined either the site is not
significant, or we have recovered the archaeological
values from it, but there are still things that would be
of interest to collectors.
"What really needs to happen is
to figure out some way to kind of provide for that kind
of designation of areas, somehow manage that kind of a
use."
But with Forest Service
archaeologists already stretched pretty thin, he says,
hobbyists probably shouldn't get their hopes up.
"Most of our archaeologists are
involved in going out and searching for sites that are
within areas where development activities are going to
occur -- timber sales, road projects, campground
development and so on," says Markley. Some 90% of
Tahoe National's program is going out to identify sites
that may be at risk of being damaged by development
activities, he says.
"We'd like to evaluate a lot
more, but in this day and age of less government, one of
the things that we get less of, is money to do that kind
of work.
"So in the practical sense,
we're not going to be able to march right through and
evaluate all these sites. But there are places that
probably could be made available.
"It's hard to say ...how
destructive the metal detecting and digging could be,
[and] there might be other kinds of environmental
concerns. But it's one of those things that it seems to
me hasn't been explored. And that maybe there are
opportunities for some partnerships with detector
groups."
While Markley is open to the
theoretical possibility of designating sites where
detectorists can ply their favorite pastime, when it
comes right down to it, he still believes the best
solution is for detectorists to simply give up most of
their collecting activities and use their detectors to
assist Forest Service archaeologists like him on site
studies.
Asked if the Forest Service is
essentially trying to impose a new consciousness on
Westerners about western land, he points out that ARPA --
the Archaeological Resources Protection Act -- "goes
back to 1979, so it's not really new." But he then
says, "Well, it has been an evolution ... It is a
change.
"There was a time when,
especially out in Nevada, gosh, it was just -- I mean,
people went out and did ..." His voice trails off
and he starts again.
"Frankly, what's happened over
time is a realization that, gosh, a lot of these places
actually represent aspects of our collective heritage,
and a lot of folks have decided that maybe going out
there and picking up all the arrowheads, taking all the
old mining equipment out of all the old mines, is really
something that's a loss for all of us."
Where Markley waxes most
enthusiastic is in discussing the possibility of
detectorists coming on board to help the Forest Service
in its archaeological projects.
"We have a really successful
program that involves metal detector folks in
archaelogical site studies and historical research on the
forest. We've had literally hundreds of folks who've
participated in that. So there's like, there's two
different folks out there.
"I think there's those that
have an interest in history, archaeology and find ways to
get involved. And then we have others who don't want to
ask the question, don't want to contact the office, and
so then they end up getting in trouble, which is a rare
occurrence."
He finds it interesting that Silver
State Treasure Hunters is asking for answers to the MLRC
questionnaire.
"We've had a number of their
members participating in our metal detectors program, but
I'm not certain that the current officers are aware of
that," he says.
"We actually started this back
in 1990, and so we've been doing it for seven years, and
really have found, if you talk to the detectorists who
participated, it's a great program, and if you talk to
the archaeologists who participated, they have a whole
new appreciation for metal detectors and metal detecting
interests. Unfortunately ... what ends up getting the
press is the one guy who manages to get crosswise with
the rules.
"My experience is that in
actuality the number of people who really want to collect
just to have something to put in the box or on the
mantel, is really a pretty small percentage. And what
many, many of these folks have told me is that they would
much rather be able to explore and participate and really
get involved in helping understand more about history
than they are in getting things for their personal
collection.
"And so I'm encouraged by
that... but I'm afraid that that other percentage of
folks who really are treasure hunters -- and you say the
Silver State Treasure Hunters are treasure hunters --
well, I would venture to guess the folks who are into
personal collection and treasure hunting, are going to
continue to probably be frustrated by these kinds of
things that protect historical sites."