On November 17, a Utah woman named Daniela Ganassim Ericksen was sentenced for vandalizing a panel of Native American petroglyphs in southern Utah in 2024. Her punishment: 12 months of probation and nearly $15,000 in fines and restitution fees.
Bystanders photographed Ericksen carving into the petroglyphs, which are located on a canyon wall near the Buckskin Gulch and Wire Pass trails outside of Kanab, Utah, on November 24, 2024. The area sits on land overseen by the Bureau of Land Management.
BLM agents arrested Ericksen, 47, a week later in nearby St. George after the photos generated public outcry.
“Accountability in this case would have been difficult to pursue without the awareness of public lands users and their willingness to report suspicious activities,” BLM officials wrote on Facebook. “By snapping some photos and taking the time to report the incident to our field office, law enforcement was able to take action.”
According to the University at Buffalo, the petroglyphs at Buckskin Gulch are likely at least 800 years old, if not far older, and were carved by ancestran Puebloan people, who used the area to hunt mule deer and bighorn sheep and grow corn, beans, and squash.
A November 17 press release from attorney Melissa Holyoak of the District of Utah’s U.S. Attorney’s Office said that the cost to repair and restore the damage to the petroglyphs has been estimated at $11,853.36. In addition to covering these repair and restoration costs, Ericksen was also fined $3,000, and now owes a total payment of $14,853.36. As part of her punishment, she has also been ordered to “send a letter of apology to the relevant stakeholder tribes in the area,” and is banned from all BLM land during her one-year probation.
The stiff fines and probation sets a good precedent for other vandals, Bonnie Smith, president of the Wyoming Association of Professional Archaeologists, Wyoming news outlet Cowboy State Daily.
“In my professional opinion, I think it’s pretty fantastic that she was prosecuted at all,” Smith said. “People who have been caught vandalizing petroglyphs usually get a slap on the wrist at best.” She added that in many cases, petroglyph vandals are never caught, much less prosecuted. The Daily cited research from the Wyoming Cultural Records Office that suggests that “at least 157 of Wyoming’s 666 known petroglyph sites have been vandalized.”
Ericksen’s sentencing comes only a few days after two cousins were slapped with probation and fines for pushing a large rock off of a cliff in Nevada’s Lake Mead National Recreation Area in 2024. The two men were filmed during the incident, and the subsequent footage went viral. One of the cousins was sentenced to two years of probation, the other a single year, and the pair were ordered to pay a total of $973 and complete a number of community service hours.
Many vandals who damage public lands are never caught. Graffiti was discovered at Arches National Park in Utah earlier this month, in the final days of the federal government shutdown. In 2022, swastikas and racial slurs were discovered on 8,000-year-old petroglyphs in New Mexico.
“It’s nice to see this woman’s prosecution is being publicized, rather than sweeping it under the rug,” Smith told Cowboy State Daily. “It gives the crime a face, so to speak.”
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