Once many years ago while hiking in the Grand Canyon I picked up a small rock to take back home as a souvenir. Later in the day when I got back up to the visitor’s center I saw a sign specifically asking everyone not to take stones or sand because with x-million visitors a year it was becoming an actual environmental problem. After briefly wrestling with my conscience I went back to the rim and chucked the stone back in.
More recently the wife and I were driving through south Texas. It was literally 100 miles between towns and along the side of the two lane road as far as you could see were millions of cholla cacti. As my wife had become interested in starting a cactus garden and as I just happened to have a shovel in the back of my truck we pulled over to dig a couple up, with the intent of seeing if they could be persuaded to grow in our yard. No one in sight for miles in any direction. But as soon as I had the second one dug up an official looking car comes along and pulls over and out steps a Texas Fish and Wildlife Officer in a very official looking uniform and broad brimmed hat who inquires as to what the hell we think we’re doing. He informs us that digging up plants along a public highway is theft and that he was well within his rights to write us a citation, but will graciously forgo that if we replant the chollas exactly back where we got them. Which we do, sheepishly. He then followed us for 45 minutes to the next town.
The scene of the crime:
https://goo.gl/maps/u3gwZGVnimt5d6cb8