Utah lawmakers advance HB536 to increase vandalism penalties, fund restorations

A bill from Rep. Stewart Barlow that broadens vandalism penalties and funnels fines into a dedicated restoration account advanced out of the House Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Committee on March 1, 2026. HB536 would expand the scope of offenses now tied to graffiti or defacement on public lands to explicitly cover damage to natural features such as hoodoos, stalactites, stalagmites and petroglyphs, and it would create the Public Lands Restoration and Protection Fund administered by the Utah State Historic Preservation Office.

Barlow framed the bill as a direct response to worsening vandalism. “The extent in which people will go to destroy these artifacts is incredible,” he said, detailing a pattern of theft and commercial sales. “They go in with power tools, actually cut out the rock mantle that they want to take and sell it on the open market.” The bill’s language, as described by sponsors and staff, targets those kinds of physical removals in addition to graffiti or simple defacement.

Wyatt Bubak, Deputy Chief of Utah Department of Natural Resources Law Enforcement, told lawmakers the patchwork in current code leaves restoration money unguaranteed. “Right now, in code, it does say that fines can be ordered to restore the site that was damaged. However, code isn’t necessarily super clear on where that money goes and it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that it goes back to the resource that it was intended to protect,” Bubak said. He said the proposed fund “would ensure restitution fines are spent on efforts to reduce incidents and restore damaged artifacts” and that “this would help ensure that if there is restitutions or fines ordered that those various landowners, whether it’s a state park, a different government agency, a private landowner, can work with the Historical Preservation Office to get funds to restore those antiquities if they’re restorable on a private landscape or a public landscape.”

The bill responds to a documented uptick in land vandalism as Utah’s outdoors have grown in popularity, including recent damage to pictograph panels in Buckhorn Draw, Emery County managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Restoration costs vary widely; officials cited repairs on private property ranging from a few hundred dollars up to over $10,000 depending on the damage and site conditions.

HB536’s advance on March 1 marks one next step in a broader legislative environment that has trended toward tougher penalties. Reviews of the 2025 session counted dozens of bills targeting criminal penalties — figures provided from that session include at least 77 introduced with 43 passing and signed by the governor, and an advocacy analysis noting as many as 94 bills aimed at penalty increases. Examples from prior sessions cited proposals on fentanyl trafficking, human trafficking penalties and expanded domestic violence definitions as part of that same pattern of expanding legal scope.

Key details remain unresolved in the public record: the supplied materials do not include the bill’s exact statutory text, the penalty classes HB536 would impose, committee vote tallies, or a fiscal projection for the new fund. If enacted, HB536 would establish the Public Lands Restoration and Protection Fund under SHPO to receive fines and restitutions and to pay for repairs, restorations and public-education programs aimed at protecting Utah’s natural and archaeological resources.