Stephen L. Fosberg, BLM Archaelogist
October 12, 2001
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Colorado Programs
Amy Wise:
* The key is to shift our focus to a geographical region and not restrict ourselves to a particular land status.
* The pool of potential volunteers is growing since young retired citizens are the fastest growing segment of the population. This is a natural source to draw upon for site stewards.
* Requiring monitoring as a condition of a Recreation Permit is a good way to get more patrolling done.
(It would be a good idea to require such monitoring on the part of OHV clubs, pack trains, river runners, hunting guides, and other permitted recreation users.)
Kathleen May
* She mentioned the partnership with the San Juan Mountain. Assoc. This offers clear advantages in going after grants.
* It is clear that site stewardship programs should work either under or in affiliation with a non-profit as this offers clear advantages in seeking grants.
Utah Programs
Kevin Jones
* He mentioned that the Utah Archeological Society and the Utah Rock Art Association have monitored sites all along.
(Clearly we need to integrate Site Steward programs with Archeological Society activities. This is also a natural case for volunteers. Kevin makes the good point that we need to strengthen our ties with amateurs.)
Cleal Bradford
* He stresses that site stewards need to cover both historic and prehistoric sites.
(We need to offer a broad range of opportunities for site stewards to become involved with and these include prehistoric and historic sites; Civil War sites; railroad sites for the railroad buffs; and Traditional Cultural Properties perhaps as a way of involving Native Americans in our Site stewardship programs.)
* We also need to involve our youth in Site Stewardship.
(More can be done to incorporate Site Stewardship into Project Archeology. Still, monitoring is serious adult business, especially where law enforcement aspects are involved.)
New Mexico Programs
Jim Copeland
* He mentions that volunteers should be involved in more than just monitoring. The Farmington BLM office uses them for replacing signs, re-seeding trails, backfilling sites, and building vehicle barriers.
(The BLM Assistance Agreement with San Juan County Museum Association is being broadened so that the stewards can take part in site condition assessments and/or actual site stabilization.)
Teri Paul
* Some of the training of site stewards has included use of GPS equipment and topographic map reading skills.
* We need to develop a network of Site Steward Coordinators.
(A great follow-up to this conference would be for the Four Corners Heritage Council to organize and sponsor the gathering of all the actual Site Steward Coordinators in the Four Corners Region and devote two or three days to those topics for which they could share information, examples, and techniques, like training packets, site documentation forms, awards and commendations strategies, fund raising techniques, grant writing, etc.)
* While it is difficult to compete for grants if the funding goes just to site monitoring, if you apply for "preservation activities" you might be successful. For example, if you received a grant for stabilization and used stewards to carry this out, some of the administrative costs you charge might help carry the monitoring part of the program.
Arizona Programs
Ray and Juanita Huber
* Federal agencies help pay for the State Coordinator's salary.
* Operating funds are raised from grants.
* They have formed a Board of Directors who help share the administrative workload.
* They also mention that grazing permittees are being recruited as site stewards.
Native American Panel
Clayton Long
* His main point is that we must "Build Bridges not Walls." The key is finding common ground among the diverse stake holders in historic preservation.
(While Native American communities and professional archeologists may have different opinions regarding site excavations we have many common interests such as site protection and prevention of looting. Involving Native Americans in site stewardship programs offers real opportunities to work cooperatively and build bridges.)
Manual Heart
* He summarized his experiences with the Four Corners Interpretive Center and how the joint venture partnerships was proceeding slowly.
(Partnerships are indeed time consuming; they are pursued not because they are efficient, but rather because the end product is stronger with wider buy in.)
Raising Money & Volunteers
Kristine Komar
* The presentation was fascinating with many facts relating to volunteers, the economy, and the economy.
(A strategy we should pursue is to try and has the Site Stewardship programs listed as one of the organizations for which dollars can be pledged as part of the Combined Federal Campaign.)
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Keynote Presentation
Sally Wisely
* A useful history behind the formation of the Four Corners Heritage Council was presented.
* Sites represent our common humanity.
Federal Agency Panel
Paul Peck - United State Forest Service
* A useful presentation of how the USFS sees heritage tourism within their overall recreation program was given.
* Recreational use of sites must occur in a manner compatible with what the resources can sustain.
* Archeologists need to answer this question before opening up sites to recreational use: what is the level of acceptable change for that site?
(Once that is defined you can design programs of data recovery ahead of time and propose strategies to scale back visitation if the carrying capacity is exceeded.)
Scott Travis - National Park Service
* He discussed high tech solutions for site monitoring.
* Training Site Stewards to do remote sensing, photo monitoring, etc. could enrich their experiences.
* NPS is broadening the role of the Canyon de Chelly Guides Association to include site monitoring.
Tom Farrell - BLM / United State Forest Service
* He mentions that the "recently retired population" was a major source for his volunteers.
* He discussed a number of strategies to motivate and interest the volunteers in their work.
(The fact that the volunteers seem very motivated by the social aspects of site monitoring is very important. People today are looking for connections, for a sense of belonging, and we need to keep this in mind when running volunteer organizations.)
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Scott Travis
* The establishment of decay models is discussed. This allows monitors to know the difference between normal decay and significant change due to vandalism or weathering.
* It is critical to have baseline documentation of sites before the Stewards start monitoring them.
* Be aware of environmental changes around sites.
* You need to establish the appropriate interval for monitoring.
* Monitoring techniques include: basic observation, noting changes of photographs from established photo monitoring points, in-field measurements, instrumentation monitoring, and broad scale overall landscape monitoring.
* Monitoring may be on a feature, site, or landscape scale. In all cases, change is compared to the decay model.
* Monitoring data can be used to change interpretive programs, protection strategies, treatments and interventions to protect sites, and influence future research efforts.
* Site Stewards' monitoring data should be used for more than just catching vandals.
Stephen Fosberg - What Comes Next? - Concluding Comments
* Federal budgets are likely to decline due to the current military needs. They will not be reduced simply because this is a Republican administration since cultural resources management has traditionally enjoyed wide bi-partisan support.
* Clearly though, we will have to become skilled in pointing out the critical nature of heritage tourism for the economies of our Western States to bolster that political support.
* Within public agencies, we need to work more closely with recreation programs; we clearly have many interests and constituent groups in common.
* We need to foster improved partnerships with Departments of Tourism. It may be possible to tap into Lodgers' Taxes as a way to fund Site Stewardship and stabilization programs.
* We need to blur the lines between pure site monitoring and site stabilization/restoration.? If funding agencies won't pay for pure monitoring, what if we used grant money to pay for a restoration project carried out by site stewards and it just so happened that some of the "administrative overhead" for the project helped sustain the site stewardship program? I believe we can get creative here and utilize grants for broader preservation activities to carry some of the monitoring we know has to be done.
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