Copyright 2008. All rights reserved. Association of National Park Rangers.

On a cold winter night in February 1991, two men were apprehended by three National Park Service law enforcement personnel for digging up Civil War artifacts on Shiloh National Military Park. It set in motion seven months of investigation, case preparation and prosecution involving felony violations of the Archaeological Resource Protection Act of 1979 for unauthorized excavation of federal land, damage to government property assessed at more than $15,000 and conspiracy.

This relatively unknown relic hunting case involving an old battlefield park in west Tennessee set a number of legal precedents regarding the enforcement and prosecution of cases of archaeological resource protection. First, it was the first felony ARPA case to be prosecuted for looting a federally administered Civil War battlefield. Second, it was the first case where the defendants pleaded not guilty, exercising the right to be tried by jury. Lastly, when the jury found in favor of the government, finding the two defendants guilty on all three felony counts, the two men became the first looters of an NPS-administered Civil War battlefield to be sentenced with imprisonment.

This successful Shiloh ARPA prosecution helped pave the way for similar court actions involving other agency-managed battlefield sites across the nation. In addition, the Shiloh looting case as investigated, prepared and prosecuted by commissioned park employees serves as a useful case model in the instruction of hundreds of federal law enforcement officers, archaeologists and attorneys in current federal archaeological resource protection training courses. However, there is an underlying touch of irony in how current agency personnel management policy would impact this 17-year-old looting incident. If, hypothetically, this particular case occurred today, involving all the same incident parameters — two looters committing a similar violation on the park, with the same three park employees working the incident — the case would never be prosecuted. That’s because, in the wake of changes enacted through implementation of Ranger Careers in 1994, the three Shiloh protection personnel who apprehended, investigated and prosecuted this important looting case to its successful precedent-setting conclusion in 1991 would not hold law enforcement commissions in this agency.

It isn’t because they have since transferred to another agency, moved on to occupy non-law enforcement positions or attained the mandatory retirement age, but for the simple reason these employees would never be commissioned today by the NPS because of the primary jobs they occupied 17 years ago within the Shiloh Interpretation and Resource Management Division. These three park rangers, as tradition and court records defined them, were the park resource management specialist, the lead ranger for interpretation and visitor services and the museum technician. In 1991 they were three of the five fully commissioned law enforcement personnel working at the park. Given the current Servicewide policy on management of the national park ranger profession, which only uses two of the three benchmark park ranger positions as defined for effective personnel management through implementation of Ranger Careers, these three NPS personnel occupying those same primary job performance functions today wouldn’t be permitted to carry law enforcement commissions because they didn’t perform law enforcement duties at least 51 percent of their on-duty time.

Historically, this position management strategy allowed for considerable flexibility, but left park ranger positions lower graded and administratively nonprofessional. With the passing of time, larger staffs in many parks and legal mandates being enforced on certain qualities of agency work, various duties traditionally performed by the ranger corps migrated to newly formed disciplines such as maintenance and resource management. The work of park rangers became more specialized as personnel began to concentrate on interpretation, law enforcement and emergency services.

However, at small- and medium-sized parks, where annual budgets and staff organizations traditionally are small, specialization of the national park ranger series to these strictly defined job functions has come with a price. In most cases it has adversely affected the ability of managers to protect and preserve park resources and provide public services for visitors at these parks.

This old chief will be the first to challenge that the current means of managing the national park ranger profession is not necessarily superior to the old way. Ranger Careers has benefited many commissioned park rangers and parks. However, the selective implementation of Ranger Careers did not benefit “all” commissioned park rangers nor has it been the best fit for managing the protection program for every type of national park. Since 1994 the Servicewide management of the ranger profession, with its associated budget impacts, has simply forced many small parks to cut protection services by reducing the number of positions.

One primary reason for this has been the restriction to make use of the combination protection and interpretation (P/I) benchmark park ranger position. As envisioned through Ranger Careers, this combination or “generalist” position was to provide park managers with the operational means and flexibility to maintain, within budget and organization limitations, a directly proportional and functioning protection operation within small parks and/or smaller districts of medium and large parks without forcing managers to gut their protection staffs to meet the required stipulations and standards governing use of full-performance park ranger protection (P) positions. The protection (P) position fits well in parks where illegal activity occurs or the potential for such activity occurs at a frequency that keeps the incumbents performing law enforcement duties at least 51 percent of their on-duty time.

In most cases these parks are large in acreage or have high visitation, or both, and normally have separate divisions of employees with greater than one employee in each division. In addition, the protection (P) position qualifies for enhanced annuity (20-year) retirement. Thus, another issue confronting the use of the combination (P/I) position is the formal creation of two corps of protection personnel — those who have enhanced annuity retirement and those who would not. The combination (P/I) ranger position is not covered by enhanced annuity retirement. However, this agency already has two corps of protection rangers, both created by implementation of Ranger Careers — fully commissioned park rangers who possess enhanced annuity, 20-year retirement and those who do not. This latter group of fully commissioned personnel (many who possess more than 20 years of commissioned service) who have been denied enhanced annuity coverage is not a small number of rangers, and despite a general apathy within the NPS toward their plight, still daily strap on the defensive equipment to provide capable professional protection work on behalf of the parks they steward and the visitors enjoying them.

My entire 24 years of service as an employee of this agency have been performed at smaller units within the National Park System, parks where the traditional diversity of park ranger job functions are still managed under interpretation and resource management organizational structures. Staffs at these parks are small, but workload demands, by the nature of the resources preserved and annual visitation, are high for every employee. At Shiloh in 1991, all five permanent employees assigned to the ranger division possessed a full law enforcement commission, a condition of their employment desired and managed for by park leadership. Although four of the five possessed primary core mission duties lying outside of law enforcement (either in resource management or interpretation), the very size of the protection staff, in having all positions commissioned, provided park management with greater flexibility in effectively scheduling and staffing for assigned duties, meeting annual performance goals for the park and the agency, and dealing with illegal activities. Each of the commissioned employees possessed knowledge, abilities and skills to carry out the multitude of required park ranger job functions in the historic tradition of early rangering — enforcing the law one minute and interpreting the compelling story of the park in the next, and providing management with the staff to perform numerous in-house natural and cultural resource management actions.

In smaller parks like Vicksburg and Shiloh, and at medium-sized parks such as Cumberland Gap and Congaree Swamp, where responses to law enforcement or emergency service incidents are likely to be more infrequent than at Independence, the Great Smokies or Yellowstone, the combination of professional interpretation and professional protection services in one employee with its smaller budget ramifications than having to hire a full-performance employee for each discipline makes appropriate sense. This type of management-driven personnel system fits well in smaller parks or smaller districts of medium or larger parks where the law enforcement workload is moderate to minimal, and where all employees are frequently asked to perform duties in other disciplines.

Today, the Shiloh Interpretation And Resource Management Division has within its post-Ranger Careers organization only two primary law enforcement positions covered by the enhanced annuity retirement that meet the legal definition of a federal law enforcement officer. Position specialization is the new order, and Shiloh was forced to create specifically defined professional interpreters and resource management positions. Given the important role of these disciplines on this 113-year-old battlefield park, the need for these positions has grown within the organization since 1994, while budget and strict adherence to protection work requirements restricted the number of law enforcement personnel management could afford. The limited number of professional specialized law enforcement positions, now standing at two, retards the flexibility in scheduling and protection services not witnessed when five permanent “generalist” rangers carried commissions. The low number of commissioned rangers and the administrative necessity to program protection duties to permit law enforcement rangers to meet their enhanced annuity stipulations means the two protection personnel at Shiloh are less frequently asked to perform duties in other disciplines. Furthermore, retention of a smaller protection staff at a park the size of Shiloh has developed some troubling issues. The single transfer or retirement of one protection ranger can force the park to operate with only one federal law enforcement officer for as much as six to nine months as the park follows procedure to fill the vacancy. It also has become far more difficult to fill the vacant positions. Vacancy certifications for open protection ranger positions at Shiloh are small, with no more than two to eight applicants routinely listed on each vacancy cert. This compares to nearly three dozen applicants for a recently announced “part-time” visitor use assistant vacancy. Furthermore, the need to try and fill any protection vacancy as quickly as possible limits the ability of management to tactically recruit qualified, noncommissioned entry-level personnel into commissioned protection positions. To do so demands the park to commit to an even greater length of time in not having a vacancy filled with an already commissioned journeyman park ranger, as it moves through the process of getting any newly hired entry-level protection ranger professionally trained and commissioned to perform law enforcement for this unique agency.

Although Shiloh experiences its share of serious protection issues, particularly ARPA, wildlife poaching, theft of government property and vandalism, the park is not attractive to many protection rangers stationed at parks where illegal activities are far more frequent. In this regard, Shiloh is now a ticket-punch location for protection personnel who transfer in only to depart within two years with another park on their résumé, gaining the necessary experience to compete for other positions. This frequent shifting of protection personnel from one park to another is understandable. At small parks like Shiloh or Stones River where organizational limitations have led to fewer commissioned employees, it creates significant operational deficiencies over the long term. Throughout my six years as chief of interpretation and resource management, the two primary law enforcement positions at Shiloh have been simultaneously filled only for 14 of the 72 months. This dysfunctional position management history is the result of one retirement, three protection ranger transfers to other parks and the management decision to recruit two promising SCEPs and train them at the entry level in an attempt to get qualified new blood. This recruitment strategy was half successful, gaining the agency a quality protection ranger, but at a cost of down time while both rangers waited to attend basic training at FLETC and complete the supervised field training program at another park. Although one of these employees left the NPS to work for another agency before earning a commission, the park enjoyed the benefit of the second ranger’s professional protection services for 14 months before the employee transferred to another park.

The only saving grace throughout this six-year period is that I still carry a full commission. Although I’m one of the commissioned rangers not covered by the enhanced annuity program, I can still meet the job demands of the professional protection ranger and provide law enforcement for the park. However, the demands on my time during these vacancies impacts the supervision and management of the entire division (23 permanent and seasonal employees and about 600 volunteers annually). This is not an enviable management position if one is responsible for directing a functional, core mission program to protect resources, visitors and employees at a prominent national park. I envy the position management flexibility my predecessors experienced when I was a buck ranger. The operational and organizational adaptability they enjoyed, despite smaller staff size, by possessing a corps of motivated and highly qualified generalist rangers was simply more efficient and effective given the budget ramifications, staff limitations and resource complexity of the smaller parks.

The national park ranger profession has become a far less effective position management scheme with only partial implementation of the three Ranger Careers benchmarks. Small parks with small operations budgets are especially vulnerable to being forced to do without either professional protection or professional interpretation services. While some managers may have found other avenues to substitute for these professional services (volunteers, cooperating association employees, local agency law enforcement, adjacent federal land management agencies), these options are almost always substandard to the fundamental purpose of the NPS as stated in the 1916 Organic Act. These types of personnel lack the professional knowledge of park cultural and natural resources required by NPS employees in the Ranger Careers position descriptions.

To fully implement effective use of the combination park ranger position will require the NPS to determine how best to reasonably compensate rangers who are required to be commissioned but conduct the infrequent, but no less complex or dangerous protection stewardship needed in many parks.

There are counter arguments to my thoughts on this matter, but I contend there remains a significant role for the commissioned “generalist” park ranger. My beloved park and many others experience the adverse effect of the generalist ranger’s absence.

Stacy D. Allen is a supervisory park ranger at Shiloh National Military Park where he serves as chief of interpretation and resource management.

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