Forest Service hopes to nab wreckers of stone marker
Posted on Wednesday, November 21, 2007
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/208345/
A 6-foot-by-4-foot stone monument that for five years had marked the entrance to the Flatside Wilderness area in the Ouachita National Forest was destroyed when vandals yanked it down with a vehicle earlier this month, a district ranger said Tuesday.
The vandalism, a rare occurrence for the national forest, left the monument cracked and in pieces on the ground in the park near Perryville. The U. S. Forest Service is offering a cash reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible, said Karen Tinkle, ranger for the forest’s Jessieville-Winona-Fourche District. The forest’s 1. 8 million acres stretch from central Arkansas to southeast Oklahoma.
The marker, which Tinkle described as “unique and beautiful” and designed to blend in with the surrounding wilderness, was found shattered on Nov. 7. Evidence at the scene indicated that someone had first removed large rocks at the base of the stone marker before using a vehicle to pull the stone down, she said.
“It’s a shame when somebody decides they want to do vandalism,” Tinkle said. “It’s tax dollars that have to pay for that.”
Replacing the marker will cost between $ 3, 000 and $ 5, 000 — money that could have gone to maintenance of campgrounds and other recreation areas in the park, Tinkle said.
Large-scale vandalism, such as the destruction of the Flatside marker, is uncommon in the state’s U. S. forests, which also include the Ozark National Forest and St. Francis National Forest, said Debbie Ugbade, spokesman for the Forest Service.
The Ozark National Forest covers 1. 2 million acres, mainly in the Ozark Mountains, and the St. Francis National Forest covers 20, 946 acres in eastern Arkansas.
Typically, vandalism is on a much smaller scale. Hunters sometimes use small wooden signs for target practice, for instance, Tinkle said.
“Anytime you have an area as large as we do, with over 400, 000 acres in this district alone, there is going to be some vandalism,” she said. “But this large type of vandalism is really very rare.”
Anyone with information can contact the U. S. Forest Service Law Enforcement at (501 ) 321-5357.