Interpretation Crib Notes: Informal Visitor Contacts — Of the 10 benchmark competencies assessed by the National Park Service Interpretive Development Program, Demonstrating Successful Informal Visitor Contacts (curriculum Module 102) is one of the most challenging but also one of the most important. While most of the other modules involve sending in an actual written or video recorded interpretive product, making it possible to complete and submit as a part of everyday business, the Informal Visitor Contacts competency requires that interpreters describe and analyze six informal visitor encounters using a log entry form consisting of 14 short answer and essay questions. Preparing this submission is time-consuming but can be a valuable exercise for any ranger, new or experienced. We often don’t put the same amount of planning and forethought into informal interpretation as we do for formal programs, but some of the most meaningful interpretive encounters can happen in a few impromptu moments. Here are a few tips and suggestions that may help submitters analyze their encounters and prepare their submissions for this important competency.

Certifiers are looking for a series of log entries that demonstrate that the interpreter understands when, why and how to provide basic and in-depth information and when, why and how to provide opportunities for the audience to form their own intellectual and emotional connections with resource meanings. This is the core of the competency and, succinctly put, it means that the certifiers are looking at each submission on an information/interpretation continuum — does the interpreter assess the needs of the audience and correctly decide to provide simple orientation, simple information, in-depth information, interpretation or all of the above? And, in order to evaluate this process, you must provide the certifiers with as much detail in your logs as you possibly can. It is better to be thorough in your descriptions than economical with your words.

Some of the most important information that you can provide in your logs are the descriptions of the audience cues that influenced your decisions to move the contact in a particular direction. Cues can be questions, remarks, body language, gestures, or other behaviors exhibited by visitors over the course of your contact with them. If a visitor appears agitated or in a hurry, include it in your narrative, especially if it influenced the way in which you handled the contact. If a visitor asks a question or makes a remark that clearly underscores the emotional or intellectual connection you were seeking to forge, include that moment in the narrative. In the many submissions I have reviewed, a lack of thoroughness in describing the audience cues that influenced the interpreter’s decision path has been a recurring motif in submissions found to be approaching certification standards.

Think holistic. You may include in your logs one of the greatest interpretive encounters in the history of interpretation, but if your other five log entries are not descriptive or do not demonstrate your knowledge of the information/interpretation continuum, the submission will not demonstrate certification standards. Certifiers make their determinations based upon the logs as a whole, not on one or two phenomenal log entries. As a whole, the logs must demonstrate an understanding of the information/interpretation continuum and contain narrative that makes your decisions and motives about the contacts transparent.

Finally, do not try to convince yourself or the certifiers that a purely informational contact contained opportunities for intellectual or emotional connections. If it was inappropriate to attempt to move the contact toward interpretation, state your reasons unequivocally, supported by audience cues. If the contact you are describing was interpretive, you should spend time on a detailed response to the last question in the questionnaire, addressing the parenthetical prompts. One of the important aspects of the certification is for the interpreter to be able to articulate an understanding of an intentional methodology for introducing visitors to the intangible meanings associated with park resources. In your log descriptions you should clearly identify the meanings you chose to introduce and why, and then analyze how you attempted to develop those meanings by selected interpretive techniques (questioning, stories, quotations, props, role playing, presenting evidence, etc). And do not just stipulate that a connection occurred; describe how you intended for your actions to provoke intellectual discovery, revelation, understanding or some other intellectual response. Describe how your decisions and words may have evoked emotional empathy, awe, wonder or other emotional responses.

The suggestions above address some of the common problems that are often seen in submissions for this competency. Additional tips and a sample log entry can be found at www.nps.gov/idp/interp/102/submit.htm. If you use your knowledge of interpretation, answer each log question thoroughly, include the audience cues that influenced your decision making process, a mix of interpretive and informational contacts (demonstrating an understanding of the difference between providing information and interpretation) and make it evident that you know what you are talking about when you address your opportunities for emotional and intellectual connections to meanings, you should find yourself to be well on the way to your first of 10 benchmark competency feathers in your flat hat.

Thanks to Becky Lacome of Mather Training Center for her preliminary review of this article.

Maintenance

Ranger magazine still is looking for someone to handle writing duties for this section. If you are interested in telling others about maintenance happenings, or you know someone who could, please step forward and help inform the ANPR membership. Contact the editor at fordedit@aol.com .

Protection

Columnist Kevin Moses was away on a fire assignment for many days before and after the press deadline for the fall edition of Ranger. His column will appear in the next issue.

Resource Management

As the Recreational Fee Demonstration program comes to an end, Congress has passed the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, which authorized collection of recreation fees not only for NPS but for other land management agencies — the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Forest Service. The legislation addresses how sites may retain up to 80 percent of the recreation fees and site-specific agency pass revenues and use them.

Parks are still awaiting specific guidelines on how the funds may be spent, but preliminary word is that they will narrow the types of projects that can compete for these dollars, which concerns resource managers who have in recent years used the “Fee Demo” funds for a variety of resource protection and management projects. New fee revenues may be used for:

• repair, maintenance and facility enhancement related directly to visitor enjoyment, visitor access, and health and safety
• interpretation, visitor information, visitor service, visitor needs assessments and signs
• habitat restoration directly related to wildlife-dependent recreation that is limited to hunting, fishing, wildlife observation or photography
• law enforcement related to public use and recreation
• direct operating or capital costs associated with the recreational fee program, and
• fee management agreements or a visitor reservation service.

This will benefit continuing efforts to tackle a backlog of cultural resource maintenance and repair projects and wildlife habitat restoration projects. However, monitoring and management efforts for other resources from archeological resources to wildlife don’t appear to qualify — and the new fee revenues specifically may not be used for biological monitoring related to threatened and endangered species.

There may be a perception that the Natural Resource Challenge has and will cover these types of programs and projects. The Challenge, which established Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) networks, Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units (CESUs), and Research Learning Centers, as well as Exotic Plant Management Teams and other capacities to address common needs, has been successful in bringing added dollars, staff and attention to a number of servicewide initiatives that benefit parks across the nation.

It was originally envisioned to be a five-year program; however, it was declared a success after the fourth year of an approximately $20 million/year base increase — leaving a shortfall in funding the last of the planned I&M networks and CESUs. In order to fund the final I&M networks, nearly $4 million in funds are being reprogrammed from the Natural Resource Protection Program (NRPP). This has been the largest “funding pot” available for park research or resource management projects for more than 20 years, providing for potentially one- to three-year projects of up to $300,000 per year.

The types of projects that were funded as NRPP — natural resource management included activities not covered by the natural resource program centers, I&M networks or EPMTs — projects such as fencing portions of parks to keep native species from crossing park boundaries onto lands where they caused unacceptable conflicts, or help control feral animals; and assessing parks’ geologic, hydrologic, and biologic resources through multi-year studies. Meanwhile, projects previously approved to start in FY2006 are being delayed one or two fiscal years, and competition for the remaining NRPP dollars and other funding sources will increase even further.

~ Sue Consolo Murphy, Grand Teton