The National Park Service is in chaos

A national park superintendent who stole Native American remains and stored them in cardboard boxes in his garage for years is only one of the most shocking details unearthed in an investigation of the National Park Service, which found the agency suffers "confusion at every level" and has "no understanding as to roles, responsibilities, and authorities regarding risk, mismanagement of or impacts to cultural resources."

The report details decades of incompetence and crime at one park in particular, Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa, but also highlights endemic mismanagement throughout the federal agency. Employee interviews revealed unclear chains of command, few accountability processes, and ignorance about cultural resources leading to inappropriate and even illegal projects.

"The one conclusion that can't be argued by anyone is our lack of competence as an agency," said a National Park Service manager in 2012.

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As for Effigy Mounds, a historic site of sacred Native American burial mounds, the scandals are more than a quarter-century in the making. In 1990, seeking to retain historical artifacts for his park in spite of a new federal law requiring their return to their American Indian tribe of origin, superintendent Thomas Munson stole the Effigy Mounds museum's collection of ancient human remains. He hid the bone fragments of 41 people in boxes in his garage until 2011, when he returned one box. That led to discovery of the rest, and Munson has now been convicted of embezzlement and required to pay $108,000 to restore the improperly stored remains.