Poachers Looting National Parks of Treasures

"The national parks are the best sanctuaries for these plants and animals," said Peter Dratch, who runs the Park Service's endangered species program. "That's why we get concerned when these genetic resources get hammered."

These estimates may be low, officials add, because they lack the resources to properly track what is missing. When agents at Joshua Tree National Park in California got special funding to monitor thefts in the mid-1990s, for example, the reported number of stolen archaeological artifacts mushroomed.

Park officials said the biggest problem they face is a lack of money for enforcement. The Interior Department has only 51 special agents for 388 national parks, which means that each agent is responsible for patrolling more than 1.5 million acres.

"It means a lot of stuff is going to go on that they don't detect," Swain said. "They have to be in the right place at the right time."

Just this month, the FBI began investigating the theft of a ceremonial tomahawk taken from a display case during visiting hours at the Whitman Mission National Historic Site in Washington state. Experts believe the tomahawk was used to kill Marcus Whitman, a 19th-century missionary who helped settle the Northwest.

Barnett said the government might want to reassess its funding for parks law enforcement, given the threats parks face. "Staffing would be an issue we need to look at," he said.

While the government has provided more money for enforcement in recent years, officials could not say whether it was aimed at poaching or other activities. Blake Selzer, legislative representative at the National Parks Conservation Association, said the lack of enforcement "is yet another consequence of the funding shortfall facing our national parks."

Rangers and special agents have become more creative, however, devising new tools to identify stolen federal property. In Shenandoah, for example, officials are coating ginseng with an orange dye that glows under black light, essentially creating a bar code that can prove that roots that end up in a marketplace originated in the park.

Out West, park officials have begun embedding devices in cactuses that mark them as federal plants, and they have set up remote cameras and sensors to monitor areas where poachers may lurk.

State and federal sting operations have nabbed dozens of park thieves in recent years. Operation VIPER, a joint effort of the Park Service and Virginia's Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, entailed setting up a fake storefront in Elkton, Va., where officers sold black-market goods to customers. Prosecutors ultimately indicted dozens of defendants on more than 100 charges. The government has already obtained 31 convictions and collected $150,000 in fines and restitution for those crimes.

"You have to be especially sneaky to get into position to see what they're doing, but it's possible," Swain said.