Rock-lovers were left stunned after footage emerged at the weekend of a group of vandals pulling apart stones that are millions of years old.
The group are being hunted by police after destroying the protected ancient rock formation in Nevada.
Some six million people visit Lake Mead National Recreation Area near Las Vegas, USA each year.
Most don’t face time behind bars for causing irreparable harm to the 2,344 square mile site’s most popular attractions.
But video footage shows two men bending over to dislodge loose slabs on an outcrop of red rock at the Redstone Dunes Trail.
The work is clearly laborious, taking several attempts before the rocks tumble over the edge and crumble in a cloud of dust as they fall.
One nearly took the man in black with it, prompting a little girl hovering nearby to scream, ‘Please don’t fall. Daddy no. Daddy daddy’.
A woman near the camera filming the events could be heard saying ‘but why’ at the campaign of destruction.
The incident happened on Sunday, April 7, according to the National Park Service, but a video only went viral over the weekend.
Footage posted to Instagram has received more than one million views and nearly 7,000 comments.
One outraged viewer commented: ‘What in the actual f*** is wrong with people! This is why we can’t have nice things.
‘Hope charges can be pressed. What a nice thing to teach the youth that was accompanying them.’
Park officials are alarmed at the damage to these ancient formations, formed from 140 million-year-old sand dunes, which can never be fixed.
John Haynes, a public information officer for the park, told KVVU: ‘It’s one of my favorite places in the park and they’re up there just destroying it. I don’t understand that.’
‘Why would you even do something like this? Like, why on Earth would you do this? This almost feels like a personal attack in a way,’ he added.
People causing this kind of damage at federally protected sites can face felony charges, a £4,000 fine and at least six months in prison if they’re convicted.
But policing the 1.5 million acre site is a mammoth task.
‘We have two big lakes, a chunk of the Colorado River. It gets pretty difficult based on our staff levels to be everywhere all at once’, said Haynes.
Instead they rely on the watchful eye of visitors to keep each other in check.
This results in thousands of submissions being made to the National Park Service’s tipline each year, MailOnline reported.
Haynes said: ‘If you are out of cell phone range or you don’t know the number at least try to capture, if you can, if it is safe, some kind of photo or video of the activity taking place.
‘You don’t have to engage people. Many people don’t feel safe engaging others out there…and that’s okay. It’s really important to let us know.’
Two Boy Scout leaders leaders were previously charged with felonies and forced to pay restitution after toppling an ancient rock formation in Utah ten years ago.
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