The Bureau of Land Management failed to consult paleontologists before doing work on the Utah site — and ended up damaging some of the fossils, a report concluded.
The assessment, which was launched after the fossils were found to have been harmed, concluded that the overall damage was minor. Even so, “this damage should not have occurred,” Brent Breithaupt, a regional paleontologist with the bureau, wrote in the report.
After releasing the report, the BLM said it would conduct an additional environmental assessment, take public input and work with paleontologists before resuming construction of the new boardwalk. The bureau “is committed to protecting plant and animal fossils on our public lands,”Patrick Donnelly with the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental advocacy group, told The Washington Post on Monday that the agency’s findings were troubling.
While the subject of intense study, the site has also become a tourist destination. Breithaupt noted in the report that improvements to the boardwalk were necessary for safety and accessibility. A project to replace the boardwalk began in late January, and crews drove a truck, trailer and a backhoe with a forklift onto the site to disassemble the old one, Breithaupt wrote.. “This was a bureaucratic screw-up,” Jim Kirkland, a Utah Geological Survey paleontologist, told the journal.
“Close examination of the trace fossils in this area shows signs of recent breakage and fracturing of the brittle impact rims around a few of the tracks,” he wrote.
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