• Strategic management of human capital
• Competitive sourcing
• Improved financial performance
• Expanded electronic government
• Budget and performance integration

In 2004 Executive Order 13327, “Federal Real Property Asset Management,” set forth a sixth initiative: improved stewardship of government-owned facilities.

These initiatives work in concert with many ongoing and new legislative initiatives — including the Government Performance and Results Act and the Human Capital Officer Act — to redirect the government’s focus toward performance management. Federal agencies, including the NPS, are being required to restructure their administrative functions so rapidly, and in so many ways at once, that many are running the risk of damaging their program effectiveness. The NPS should ensure we learn lessons from other federal agencies for how to avoid or constructively manage these unintended consequences.

Change can be disruptive and stressful and yet is pervasive in the government. Automation, consolidation and the search for efficiency are at the forefront of administrative changes in the NPS, just as they are in business. But close behind — in government — is the search for public accountability, results and excellence in the stewardship of resources.

These forces work their way through the fabric of government from Congress and the president, to the implementing departments and agencies, and eventually to the individuals who make the government work. Administrative processes and effective leadership at each level hold this system together, and make it efficient and effective — or not. Current trends in administrative management in the NPS appear to be going in opposite directions at once. Administrative capacity is being downsized and squeezed for resources. But, at the same time, many new administrative duties are being added. For example, downsizing in the NPS regional offices has shifted workloads to the parks where the administrative people needed to do them don’t exist because positions haven’t been added or have been cut, and new work, never done before, has been added. The new governmentwide emphasis on strengthening internal management controls and the need to fund new homeland security measures within park’s existing budgets are among the many forces increasingly straining declining administrative resources throughout the NPS.

As the NPS plans for an increased workforce with the Centennial Challenge, I certainly hope that administrative functions will be viewed as critical to the success of our organization. All of us who work in the administrative ranks must ensure we are most efficient and effective in the jobs that we perform.

Interpretation

Notes on creating a Junior Ranger book — Have you ever created a Junior Ranger book? I’m in the midst of finishing my first one. It has been a good challenge that vexed me and inspired me at the same time. I learned a lot from the process and want to share some ideas and experiences with you. Seasonals, take note, because this is one of those things that you can help you increase your skill set.

To make the Junior Ranger experience memorable I wanted our activity book to go beyond mazes and crosswords. Those are easy, and in my opinion, forgettable. It isn’t what memories are made of. I wanted more from the Junior Ranger activity book.

When planning this, the scope of the project, the time and resources the proposal needs, and your availability are all key. I would suggest postponing a Junior Ranger book project until you really do have the time, resources and creative inspiration to do it right.

Your first consideration must be time. Make sure you can dedicate yourself to this knowing it might take hundreds of hours to finish the book. It blew my mind the number of distractions that stalled the process. The conversations and brainstorming sessions about content, travel, meetings, collaborations, rewrites; all of this must be taken into consideration. It is easy to drastically underestimate the time needed.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks I found was graphic elements. Artists are hard to come by. Luckily, I do photography so I was able to get the images we needed. But, that took days with our models and then more days using Photoshop. Clip art is a poor substitute. Kids see it at school all year. Well-illustrated kids books are much more compelling than boilerplate clip art. So, before starting off on your process, make sure you have a way to get images in your book. Have someone with photography skills or quality artistic skills on hand. They need to be part of the planning process, not an afterthought.

Conceptually, now that we have a product that I’m getting close to happy with, we have discovered, at least with our book, three threads that interweave in the final product. The more ways you can tie your ideas together, the more polished and professional the final product.

I wanted the whole book to flow from start to finish. I didn’t want a conglomerate of random resource activities without any rhyme or reason. We chose to have two characters, a boy and a girl, canoe the Columbia River downstream meeting various people and resource stories, using geography and the flowing river as our tangible continuity element. This would tie the activities together page by page using a primary theme of recreation by canoeing (Lake Roosevelt is a recreation area), and give the kids something to follow as they learned and explored the park.

I also wanted a diverse but representative sample of park resources. Lake Roosevelt is a stew of more than a dozen major resource themes and many more sub-themes. Too many resources would unbalance the book, thus we had to cull the number of activities.

The third thread was to use cutting edge ideas in education. I eschew random word games like puzzles and connect-the-dot activities without context. They aren’t dynamic; they just sit there on the page disconnected from a kid’s park experience. So, we took a few of those activities and tied their content to our three threads. The rest of the activities we invented. I wrote and field-tested a short story about a lava flow for parents to read to younger kids, or for older kids to read on their own and then teach their parent. This would enhance the family camping and resource education experience. On the next two pages is an artistic activity where the kids demonstrate what they understood by drawing their vision of the lava landscape.

Other hot topics in education include bilingual activities. A seasonal worker here had a few great ideas of combining the Salish Indian language with the book. She is going to meet with a local tribal representative to figure out how to approach this perhaps with a rhyming mini-story.

We have other activities. One involves some easy math for kids to do as they play the role of fur trader at the post trying to trade tools for their animal pelts. Another activity is to have the kids write a letter home about how they would feel if they were stuck in an Indian boarding school away from their parents. The aim is to explore their feelings of empathy for other kids.

In a nutshell, we have combined various learning techniques in our Junior Ranger book to help kids learn about the resources of our park beyond the superficial. We want these fun and engaging activities to actually take some time so the kids have the chance to immerse themselves in park resources and make that connection.

It is a great experience to write a Junior Ranger book. But, it is definitely not an endeavor to be jumped into without a real understanding of the process involved, the resources needed, the time required, and a clear idea of what you want to accomplish in an end product.

Protection

Editor’s Note: For this issue’s Protection column, Ranger invited Melissa Lamm of Assateague Island to be a guest columnist andprovide first-hand insight into the work of seasonal protection rangers.

Ranger Ready — “I feed off of the energy of all of you seasonals!”

This was part of the welcoming I and several other seasonal rangers received during our orientation to Assateague Island National Seashore. Being a new, energetic seasonal, it was precisely the welcoming I was hoping for.

One of my supervisors, Ranger Dana Condron, stated it — and with gusto. All of us present at the meeting knew exactly the kind of energy he was speaking of and appreciated the recognition of the excitement we were bringing to the season ahead.

Seasonals bring new blood to our parks for months of hard work during peak seasons. Whether it is their first season or their 20th, seasonal rangers bring fresh minds and bodies knowing that they are a vital and integral part of the Park Service experience. Those in the first few seasons of their career in law enforcement have lots of work ahead of them. Fresh from an academy, we law enforcement rangers rely on permanents to extend and reinforce the training we have received.

I can remember sitting in the classroom less than a year ago listening as my instructors, many of whom were permanent NPS rangers, delivered their presentation. I was excited at the thought of someday serving among their ranks.

Having worked in natural resources for many years prior to the NPS, I found that I had great respect for rules and regulations but my position lacked the authority necessary to enforce them. I was interested in law enforcement for the increased responsibility and the ability to better protect park resources. I found the list of academies on the ANPR website, which led me to the seasonal law enforcement training program in Franklin, N.C. From day one I could feel my life changing, and from the first classes and scenarios, I was hooked.

After graduation the job search began. This was both exciting and nerve racking getting responses from around the country and not knowing where I would get placed. I wanted a park that would allow me opportunities to get my hands on every aspect of the ranger job. A little place called Assateague Island on the Virginia coast gave me exactly what I was looking for.

Coming to Assateague, my determination was palpable from my initial orientations and ride-alongs, and while I enjoyed riding with my LE partners, I really wanted my own truck to start my own patrols. Quickly my wish was granted, and on a daily basis, it is now my honor and privilege to patrol and protect this magnificent seashore landscape. Though this keeps me busy, I still find time to take in the very environment that I protect, and I never cease to be enamored with my surroundings.

My work has been varied — assisting in major/minor incidents, emergency medical situations, surf rescue operations, my first western fire assignment, additional training, assisting resource management with predatory control, or impromptu interpretation of the resource or the regulations to protect them.

I have found that within our agency we pride ourselves on good communication between various agencies, and I see how effective this makes the protection divisions. At Assateague Island, U.S. park rangers and refuge officers work together in proactive law enforcement where all types of patrols — by ATV, hiking, biking and vehicle — are encouraged. We also benefit from maintaining positive relations with our sister NPS divisions and with local law enforcement, EMS and fire agencies.

The next chapter in my seasonal ranger journey could take me anywhere, but my ultimate goal is to become a full-performance ranger. I may travel the states fighting fires, working as an EMT, physically training in martial arts or who knows what until the busy season needs me again. Through all of this, I’ll continue to bring the energy to feed my fellow rangers and hope that they’ll also bring their own.

As for getting my own truck, I not only finally got one — I’m on my seventh; the first six broke down. Ah, the life of a ranger.

~ Melissa Lamm, Assateague Island

A glance at a recent monthly report from the associate director for natural resources stewardship and science indicates a significant number of parks across the country are enlisting the directorate’s help with water resource issues.

At Kaloko-Honokhau NHP, the NPS is concerned that irrigation of an adjacent residential and golf course development will draw groundwater from wells, affecting groundwater-dependent ponds, pools, wetlands and ocean waters in the park. Near Wind Cave the NPS resolved protests for two applications to pump groundwater from the Madison Aquifer through an agreement that allows the local water users’ district to pump in exchange for an aquifer test, metering and reporting of water withdrawals, and water quality analysis to help the NPS further define aquifer properties in the area. In a last-minute settlement agreement, the proponent of an aggregate mine seven miles from Chickasaw agreed to monitors the effects of pumping on the Arbuckle-Simpson aquifer and pursue other groundwater sources. At Great Sand Dunes, the Colorado Water Court issued a preliminary decision that the NPS is entitled to make an in-place appropriation for maintaining groundwater and surface water levels and stream flows on, across and under the national park and preserve. The court also required that the agency estimate a range of values of the water appropriated under varying historic and projected climatic conditions.

Drought conditions and record fire danger ratings persisted across much of the West this past summer, while unusually heavy summer rains flooded streets in other parts of the nation. Whether the vagaries of climate variation or change, these events highlight the persistent need for more scientific attention on water supply. My home park has identified the need for better understanding of both surface waters and our groundwater supply, and how human activities and changing environmental conditions may affect them. The NPS Water Resources Division, like its sister groups that focus on air quality, biological and geological resources, has a array of specialists who assist parks with science and management issues that are frequently beyond the staff capacity and/or technical expertise of park resource staff. Their products include settlements such as those mentioned above, or technical reports, such as those recently published on the hydrogeology and water supply wells at Lava Beds and Catoctin Mountain Park.

I was taken aback by a recent article in my local newspaper which, meaning well, encouraged water conservation by residents “even though there is no shortage because the local supply comes from groundwater, not surface water.” Groundwater, though unseen, is not an unlimited or automatically renewable resource. As the snow masses visibly decline from Glacier, Grand Teton and other parks, groundwater tables may be depleted. Inventory and monitoring networks across the NPS have identified water quality as one of the key vital signs to track as an indicator of park resources’ health. Some networks have included water quantity in the list of important monitoring needs; I suspect that monitoring water supply — both seasonal and permanent — will become more crucial to many parks over the long term.

NOTE: Are you in resource management and interested in becoming a columnist in this space? Please contact the editor at fordedit@aol.com.