HOME
Who We Are Current News Action Items Ranger Rendezvous Communications Questions Member Services Membership Information Other Groups of Interest Contact Us

ANPR Position on Full Utilization of Ranger Careers

Approved by ANPR Board of Directors, April 2008

Management of the national park ranger profession has evolved during the history of the National Park Service. The NPS used several position management strategies for the park ranger occupation prior to 1994. As a matter of necessity rangers performed generalist duties in the early years of the NPS, allowing park rangers to be multiskilled workers, spending equal amounts of time in such disciplines as interpretation, resource management, maintenance, law enforcement and emergency services. These strategies allowed for a great deal of flexibility, but left park ranger positions lower graded and administratively “nonprofessional.”

With the passing of time, larger staffs in parks and legal mandates beginning to be enforced on certain qualities of NPS work, various duties historically performed by park rangers began to migrate to newly formed disciplines such as maintenance and resource management. With these changes park ranger positions became more specialized, too, concentrating on interpretation, law enforcement and emergency services.

The most recent official servicewide policy on management of the national park ranger position was finalized in July 1994 and is titled Ranger Careers. Ranger Careers established three professional, GS-9 full-performance-level positions in the park ranger series. These position titles are:

Both the park ranger (P) and park ranger (P/I) positions were to hold law enforcement commissions.

One of the most attractive aspects of Ranger Careers was that it was to be “a management-driven personnel system and not a personnel-driven management system,” as former NPS Chief Ranger Jim Brady was fond of saying. In other words, park managers and supervisors were supposed to be intelligent enough to analyze the mix of duties needed for their park and self-select the appropriate mix of positions in the three position descriptions to accomplish the park’s workload in interpretation and protection. While there were some “less than desirable” implementation models of Ranger Careers at individual parks, over time the more enlightened park managers were able to properly identify the work duties needed to meet annual park work plan goals in interpretation and protection and utilize the appropriate mix of the three position descriptions to meet the park’s needs.

The three position descriptions each have their own strengths and are best utilized to meet specific needs. However, it is important to remember that the journeyman GS-9 grade of all three is based on the professional-level knowledge of park natural and cultural resources and the incumbents’ ability to use this knowledge to educate park visitors, neighbors and/or cooperators about park resources, or the ability to use this knowledge to protect park resources from damage, destruction and/or removal by individuals engaged in intentional or negligent illegal activities. This resource knowledge is required by all three positions to successfully complete the grade-controlling duties performed by the incumbents. A park ranger (I) spending the vast majority of duty time providing information to park visitors that does not utilize and communicate this resource knowledge would not be performing at the full-performance, GS-9 level. Likewise, a park ranger (P) spending the vast majority of duty time enforcing public safety and property regulations and laws and providing emergency services so that there is not time allowed for them to gain or utilize this resource knowledge to educate visitors would not be performing at the full-performance, GS-9 level.

The park ranger (P) position qualifies for enhanced annuity retirement (20-year) and meets the legal definition of a “federal law enforcement officer.” This 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. Most often 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.

The park ranger (P/I) position does not qualify for enhanced annuity retirement (20-year) and does not meet the legal definition of a “federal law enforcement officer.” This position 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. In parks where responses to law enforcement or emergency services incidents are infrequent this combined position provides the park with professional interpretation and law enforcement services in one employee with smaller budget ramifications than hiring a full-performance, GS-9 employee in each discipline.

The United States received a shock with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that permeated almost every aspect of our daily lives. Position management of the NPS park ranger profession did not escape the changes demanded by the administration in charge of the executive branch in response to the attacks. The U.S. Department of the Interior ordered the NPS to swiftly mobilize sufficient commissioned rangers to cover facilities and offices of DOI all over the country. This included so-called “icon parks” such as Independence, Mount Rushmore and Statue of Liberty, DOI facilities such as offices in Washington, D.C., and dams and other infrastructure on DOI-managed lands.

The NPS had problems meeting this departmental request for at least two reasons. First, most commissioned rangers were not trained in terrorism detection, prevention or response. The task to be performed required specific knowledge and personal protective equipment and most park rangers had neither. This was especially true of those commissioned rangers in the park ranger (P/I) positions in the smaller parks. Secondly, parks barely had enough rangers to cover the necessary shifts to protect their own parks and to provide education to park visitors. Many small parks had only one commissioned ranger, and so many parks refused to allow all or part of their commissioned rangers to be assigned to these temporary duty assignments. Needless to say DOI, the Department of Justice and the administration were less than satisfied with the NPS response and pressed for changes in NPS policy, guidelines and directives to “correct” what they viewed as position management deficiencies in preventing and/or responding to future terrorist attacks. One of these changes appears to have been a prohibition on utilizing the park ranger (P/I) position description.

Since this guideline/directive went into effect sometime after Sept. 11, 2001, it is ANPR’s opinion that the national park ranger profession has returned to a far less effective position management scheme. Small parks with small operational budgets are especially vulnerable to being forced to do without either professional protection or professional interpretation services. While creative managers have found other avenues to substitute for these professional services (volunteers, cooperating association employees, local agency law enforcement, adjacent federal land management agencies), we believe these options are almost always substandard to the fundamental purpose of the NPS stated in the 1916 Organic Act, as amended, because they do not have the professional knowledge of park cultural and natural resources required by NPS employees in the Ranger Careers position descriptions. While we could name individual parks where these professional services are absent, we have chosen not to at this time to avoid singling out specific park managers whose choices have been severely restricted by this position management guideline/directive.

It is ANPR’s official position that the NPS abandon any national park ranger position management guideline, directive or addendum to Ranger Careers that prevents park managers from utilizing the full range of position descriptions found in Ranger Careers, including the combined park ranger (P/I) position that is critical to efficiently operating small parks and/or smaller districts of medium and large parks.