 - Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon signed a bill into law last week that takes steps to survey and protect petroglyphs on state lands.){kind=link}
(Cheyenne, WY) – Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon signed a bill into law last week that takes steps to survey and protect petroglyphs on state lands.
Sponsored by the Select Committee on Tribal Relations, Senate File 91 – now Senate Enrolled Act 91 – allows the Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources to begin surveying and documenting petroglyphs and pictographs on Wyoming state lands.
It also makes damaging those historic inscriptions a misdemeanor offense punishable by a fine of up to $750, imprisonment for up to six months, or both.
No funding
Originally, SF 91 included a $441,340 appropriation for the Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources to support surveying, documenting, and three-dimensional modeling of all known petroglyphs and pictographs on state, school and institutional land in Wyoming – but that appropriation was removed from SF 91 last month after the Wyoming Senate decided not to pass the legislature’s supplemental budget bill on Feb. 26.
Wyoming Rep. Andrew Byron, R-Jackson, introduced the amendment to remove the appropriation during a House Travel, Recreation, Wildlife, and Cultural Resources Committee meeting Feb. 27, explaining that, “with what happened yesterday and with where the current temperature is, I think that the appropriation would potentially make this bill go away for a long time.”
“We need to save this committee bill,” Byron said. “The intent (is) to keep the ball rolling.”
Wyoming Rep. Lloyd Larsen, R-Lander, later questioned the proposal to remove the appropriation when the amendment was debated on the floor of the Wyoming House, asking how the Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources could be expected to survey known petroglyphs on state lands without any funding support.
In response, Byron said representatives from the agency told him they were “comfortable with, at this time, removing that appropriation (as a) way we could continue moving this bill forward and getting in statute the framework to do” the surveying, and Wyoming Rep. Robert Wharff, R-Evanston, noted that the agency can come back to the Legislature during next year’s budget session to request the funding needed to support the surveying process.
Wyoming Rep. Ivan Posey, D-Fort Washakie, expressed support for SF 91 despite the removal of the original appropriation.
“I know the significance of a lot of these sites and how important they are,” he said. “We’re moving in the right (direction) here, and … the appropriations could be dealt with in maybe next year’s session.”
Later, Larsen proposed an amendment that would have required the Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural resources to request the funding to support the surveying process as part of its 2026-2027 budget, but the amendment failed in a 25-26 vote.
Protection
Before SF 91 became law this month, there were no statutes in place in Wyoming protecting rock art on state land, Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources Deputy Director Sara Sheen told the Senate Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources during a meeting in January.
That’s despite the fact that “rock art is one of Wyoming’s more phenomenal examples of cultural history,” State Archaeologist Spencer Pelton said – describing both “Native American rock art” as well as “the historic inscriptions in Wyoming that are associated with the Emigrant Trail era.”
“Unfortunately, people still vandalize this stuff a lot,” Pelton told the Senate Travel Committee. “(And) once these things are damaged … there’s not really a good way to restore these things back to their previous state. So I really feel pretty strongly that there needs to be some disincentive from doing that.”
When SF 91 came before the Senate Appropriations Committee later that month, Wyoming Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, pointed specifically to the rock art sites in Fremont County, which are gradually “disappearing” due to vandalism as well as weathering.
“It’s important to protect these images (and) document them so that we always have the images and perhaps can learn from those images,” Case said. “We need to do (it) now before we lose them.”
Wyoming Sen. Tim Salazar, R-Riverton, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he was “shocked” to hear “how important this is.”
“This is our history, and it would be a shame to lose that history,” he said.