Acting Administrative Officer — During my maternity leave from Sept. 20, 2005, to Jan. 17, 2006, Yosemite Chief of Interpretation and Education Chris Stein was designated as acting chief of administration. He stated that he gained a new respect for the administrative operations and provided some valuable input for Yosemite to consider. I would like to share his words with Ranger readers:

• Serious position management needs to take place now. To effectively accomplish this, I recommend that you bring in a NPS human resource person who has done this elsewhere (preferably at a large park). The squad needs to work with this person (for up to a week) to develop a core organization chart of employees we must have, those that are nice to have, and those that may not be needed anymore. When these difficult personnel decisions are made, we’ll know what we need to do in the future to hire and develop the human resources of our park.
• The first move in serious position management is to immediately put the brakes on hiring (in this case, hiring with ONPS monies, but it applies to soft monies as well). No division chief will take you seriously unless they personally ‘feel it.’ Freeze the hiring of all ONPS-funded positions. Yes, there will always be exceptions to the rule, but, for the most part, very few exceptions should be made to this hiring freeze (everyone has a sad story). You may also consider freezing every position (even soft money funded jobs) because this soft money may be needed to pay for another position (if legally possible) after position management decisions are made.
• Yosemite spends a million dollars (or more) each year in ONPS monies for seasonals and PLTFT salaries above and beyond our six-month obligations. Realizing that ‘it’s not that simple,’ this initial foray into how our ONPS money is spent deserves further investigation because it could potentially be an area to look at to help balance the budget in the future. Any new ONPS rules should be given to division chiefs at the start of the fiscal year (or sooner) so they can forewarn their branch chiefs and budget analysts.
• Seasonal housing policies (e.g., how bed numbers are distributed, who is selected for housing, etc.) need clarification. With our increase in hiring of TERM LTFT employees (who are currently eligible for seasonal housing), we might seriously be limiting housing availability for “true” seasonals.
• I recommend that Heather continue to periodically take all administration employees for educational outings in the park so they can see why they work at Yosemite. I know that Heather has done this in the past. During my detail, during the scheduled power black out, I took the administration team over Tioga Pass to Mono Lake (unbelievably, some employees had never been there before). I also took the team on a Valley Floor tram tour – they loved it! I feel that these “outings” are essential for administration staff who do not regularly visit the park.

From the sound of it, Chris learned a lot in four months about a few of the complex things we deal with from day to day in administration and can now appreciate more all we do. I encourage others who aren’t admin specialists to take similar opportunities to understand more about admin operations.

Interpretation

Editor’s note: New Ranger columnist Jeff Axel describes himself as a paid snowbird. He is sharing duties of this interpretation column with Rick Kendall of Death Valley.

I should tell you a secret. I work at two parks. I’m permanent. As far as I know, I am the only interpretive ranger in the National Park Service who is permanent, GS-9, and can call two parks home. I spend the summer at Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area in Washington state managing the interpretive operation at Fort Spokane. I spend the winters at balmy Tumacácori National Historical Park in southern Arizona. I’ve been in this position since 2002.

Most NPS seasonals are lucky if they can find work in winter and summer. They have to pay for their own biannual migration. I am paid per diem and travel expenses to drive between my two parks. In addition, I have the same benefits as any permanent.

This job is called a “split” position. Neither park that hired me had enough funding for a permanent full performance ranger year round, but together they did. They also have different peak seasons, so the position benefited both parks. Lake Roosevelt hatched the idea to split a vacant interpretive ranger to meet the park’s most dire interpretive needs. Tumacácori had lost a GS-9 to retirement and could not afford a replacement, but needed help during the busy winter season. Both parks had to let go of off-season interpretive projects. They found each other after an announcement on InsideNPS.

The job was conceived as a GS-5/7/9 position with the potential to bring someone new into the NPS. This was the open door that allowed me to build my NPS career and reach the professional level. After four years I’ve begun looking for a job where I don’t have to move any more. Almost every day I think how lucky I am to be in such a position. I still remember when I got the call. I was sitting in my bedroom at Zion at 44 Watchman looking out my bedroom window at the Navajo sandstone cliffs when the phone rang. That call ended my five years as a seasonal and the next 35 years came into focus.

Why would I like to see my position emulated at other parks in the Service? It is unconventional and fun. It built my skills quickly because it exposed me to two different park operations. I met many NPS employees and vastly increased my knowledge of other parks in the system. The job opens a door to permanent employment for those dedicated to the Service but still living a flexible life. As we all know, it is profoundly difficult to break into the permanent ranks because of the level of competition. Current permanent employees who don’t want to move would be disinclined to apply. This reduces the number of applicants and increases the selection odds for seasonal employees. I have friends out there, still seasonal, who are chomping at the bit for permanent employment. They wouldn’t mind the inconvenience of moving.

For managers reading this: if you are pondering sharing a permanent employee with another park you would do the NPS a great service by bringing in new employees to replace the retiring ranks and give deserving applicants a chance at a federal career. Plus, without having to fund a year-long FTE, you can find budget relief. This sort of creative position allows you to meet basic needs without losing a position in our current budget situation. Depending on the career field, the position may be open to special hiring authorities such as outstanding scholar, disability and SCEP hires.

There are challenges to the job. I had not anticipated the complications of maintaining two desks, two computers, two filing systems, and hoping everything was intact when I returned to the other park six months later. There were the inevitable problems of “oh, I must have left that at Lake Roosevelt” or “what happened to the laminator?” Outside of work, I have to pack up my life and move every six months. I can’t have closets full of clothes, shelves of books or many possessions of any sort. It all has to fit in my truck and a little trailer. There are only so many boxes I can bear to pack.

After four years in this position, I’ve found that the job has been a wonderful opportunity to flex my career muscles in the NPS. I have laid the foundation for a career. I’ve had a variety of leadership challenges. I’ve found a place from which to grow in the NPS. There are many seasonals out there in a variety of disciplines who are knocking on the door to status and would like that chance too.

Addendum: Jeff Axel started working as an interpretive ranger with the NPS straight out of college in 1998. He worked first as an SCA intern at Lake Roosevelt, later a GS-7 seasonal supervisor, and now as the interpretive supervisor at Fort Spokane in Lake Roosevelt NRA. He also has worked at Carlsbad Caverns, Zion and Tumacácori. Currently he works for the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail. He looks forward to continuing to write columns for Ranger magazine. If you want more information about split-position jobs, contact him at jeff_axel@nps.gov.

Protection

Dare You to Move — In Army infantry units, soldiers are expected to be able to “shoot, move, and communicate.” So much so, that it has become an infantry mantra. The parallels between the infantry and rangering in the Park Service are uncanny, and like infantry troops, we rangers need to be able to shoot, move and communicate.

I’d like to focus here on the “move” part.

A few years ago a contemporary rock music band called Switchfoot released a song titled, “Dare You to Move.” In an interview about the song, band members explained that it was meant to inspire people to get off the couch, to get outside and experience the world, to really live. Remember Braveheart: “Every man dies. Not every man really lives.”

In short, the song was meant to inspire people to — move.

When we are doing our jobs right, we are definitely moving. We ride, hike, run and pedal trails, climb the peaks, run the rivers, patrol the mountains, deserts, canyons, forests, shorelines and city streets. We catch the perps, fight (and light) the fires, treat and rescue the injured, search for the lost, and we manage the resources via any number of varied patrol mediums.

Moving like this can at times be arduous work, but for many of us, that’s one of the very things that attracted us to rangering. It makes us feel alive. We relish the opportunities to sweat, to breathe hard, to bleed, to move. If it hurts a little, so what? In his autobiographical account of his unprecedented running feats, Ultramarathon Man, author and running legend Dean Karnazes quotes a man named John Short: “What counts in battle is what you do when the pain sets in.”

As we begin to move more, an amazing thing happens — we become more fit. The more fit we become, the easier it is for us to do the physically challenging parts of our jobs. Physical exertion actually becomes an enjoyable aspect of our jobs.

The Park Service allows us three hours per week of devoted physical fitness time. Many of us take advantage of this, but many do not. How many people do you know who would welcome the privilege of exercising on the clock?

I can think of hundreds of reasons why rangers should place a high premium on physical fitness throughout our careers, and for that matter, our lives.

If you maintain a good frame of mind regarding fitness, it shouldn’t be an irksome task that we dread. Instead, it ought to be a crucial part of our day that we actually look forward to, that we seek out. Our workouts should make us feel alive.

The fact that we can spend time on duty pursuing a level of physical fitness is a sweet benefit of our already-envious jobs. But three hours a week won’t cut it. That’s where our frame of mind comes in. If we place that high premium on fitness, our attitudes will reflect it during our off-duty time, too.

Why not walk laps at a local charity relay? Devote one evening a week to a family bike ride. Run a 5K or a 10K. Better yet, a marathon — 26.2 miles. Seems like a lot. But with diligent training, you can do it. And once you do, those endorphins kick in — you are alive! P-Diddy and Oprah did it. Go on, run a marathon. I dare you.

I dare you to get out of the cruiser. Hit the trails. Get that heart rate up — your loved ones will thank you later.

~ Kevin Moses, Big South Fork

Resource Management

In preparing for a presentation to the National Park Foundation’s Ecological Research Fellows, a group of post-doctoral scientists performing basic research in national parks across the country, I was asked to explain why parks are often — in the words of the researchers — “unfriendly” to research, especially to experimental design and manipulative studies.

The question was the complete opposite of those which I frequently get asked in parks, by rangers and other staff, which generally go something like this: “What good is that research anyway? Why can’t they do it somewhere else?”

I gave the “post-docs,” who already have earned Ph.D.s but are typically in a sort of purgatory between grad school and having a faculty job at a university or research institution (perhaps like holding a term position with the NPS), a bit of Management Policies, with a touch of the Omnibus Act of 1998 thrown in. That parks can support both applied (helps address a specific park-related issue) and basic research (may help society as a whole or simply advance the state of knowledge without a direct application known at present). That we are compelled to use the best available science to help us make decisions about how we manage resources and people. That, while older policies asked us and the scientists to consider whether the research needed a park environment and, if not, it was likely to be disapproved, that stricture no longer holds. However, I said that studies which manipulate park resources, even for a short-term experiment, are a harder sell, even to a chief of resources like me. Like a medical doctor, I’m programmed to “first, do no harm.”

I also told them that, in my view, NPS culture, especially in the parks, is still rather conservative if not suspicious about research. It is certainly easier to get research review boards, resource councils, wilderness committees and park managers to approve studies that tackle critical park issues. The denials and/or the jokes come more often for someone studying the sex life of bumblebee wasps (a real example from my current park), even if no NPS money or support is involved.

The post-docs working in parks from Acadia to the Santa Monica Mountains, few in wilderness settings, spoke passionately about the value of basic research — and how parks were often an ideal location in which to work because they are such an undisturbed, healthy natural environment compared to almost anywhere else in the nation. As one plant ecologist put it, “There’s so much less noise in the system.”

Researchers generally love to talk about their work. I always encourage them to check in with park rangers (and follow the rules and be low maintenance!), explain what they’re doing and, later, share interesting findings and implications with many audiences through various means. Still, the very nature of research is slow and meticulous, calling for great deliberation and analysis, and often equivocal in outcome. It’s not atypical to wait two years after the completion of field work for results to be presented, especially if the researcher seeks peer-reviewed publication — the highest test of quality work. It’s the polar opposite of most protection rangering, at least — immediate, adrenaline pumping, and calling for quick, decisive judgment, action and documentation.

The “fellows” left me pondering the chasm that may exist between what the scientific community thinks parks should provide, not just to them but to society, and what rangers think about permitting and supporting research in their parks. I invite you to converse, if not with me and other readers in Ranger, then with your local resource managers and researchers.

~ Sue Consolo Murphy, Grand Teton