Administration

Fasten Those Seatbelts: Travel Ceiling Turbulence Ahead! — I am betting every regional office has uttered a similar word of warning to their park units regarding the strict travel ceiling rules this year. Parks are being asked to adhere to their authorized travel ceilings this year more so than ever. Regions are even asking that if parks can do so, they return any portion of their ceiling they anticipate not needing so it can be reallocated to another park unit that will need it. Words like “mission critical” and “teleconferencing” are back in the vocabulary of park leadership.

The National Park Service travel ceiling was established in FY 2003 at the direction of Congress using the FY 2002 travel obligations as a baseline. In 2002, travel obligations were at an all-time high, prompting a congressionally imposed ceiling.

A travel ceiling has been set each year for the NPS and is scrutinized each time it is exceeded. Travel ceilings are exceeded due to a number of factors, including details, travel requirements for leadership, law enforcement, and with the new consolidation of work groups such as the Servicing Human Resource Offices and Major Acquisition Buying Offices, parks hosting zonal FMSS staff and safety officers for their regional zones/ hubs.

Most regions have, by year end, exceeded the ceiling. One region is considering taking the position that if a park exceeds the ceiling, the amount they exceeded would be taken from the park base the following year. All over the NPS, conference travel is being scrutinized and has resulted in three conferences being canceled in the Intermountain Region so far this fiscal year.

There is some travel that is exempt: permanent change of station, grants, Fundamentals training, reimbursed international travel, oil spill travel and wildland fire activity (Fund 85). One serious impact to parks is the inclusion of backcountry travel counting against park travel ceilings. WASO accounting is working on how to get it excluded.

Parks are asked to be vigilant with regard to their travel ceiling. Sharing the travel ceilings within a region will soon become the norm.

So fasten that seatbelt and hang on for a bumpy ride. The challenge for the NPS will be to stay within the imposed travel ceiling but remain a first-class agency with mission-critical trained employees. Now more than ever regions and their park units will need to be creative and collaborative to meet the travel ceiling restrictions.

Interpretation

Walking the Walk — Interpreters are trained to believe lots of things. But, do we truly believe the things we hear in interpretive trainings and seminars like “the visitor is sovereign” and “all points of view are valid and should be honored”? If so, do our programs and interpretive operations always live up to those standards?

As professional interpreters it is important for us to not only talk the talk when it comes to our values, we must also walk the walk.

There are countless examples of where these values sometimes get challenged. Take a look at one perennial interpretive favorite: geology. Geology is incorporated into at least one of the primary interpretive themes at many NPS units. Yet most of those sites only present one point of view about the topic: the scientific one. For a long time this bias has been an institutional one. Travel to any park with exhibits more than 15 years old and you will see what I mean.

More recently the bias seems to be less institutional and more personal. For example, I have a good friend who works at a park in which the primary tangible resources are geological. This friend was recently contacted by a local minister who called him and his staff out regarding the singular way in which the park interprets its resources. The minister stated that he was most upset by what he called the park’s unwillingness to accept that a creationist explanation was even possible.

When I pushed my friend about this, he initially talked about NPS being a science-based organization and the fact that we have certain policy and mandates to follow. However, as our conversation progressed he realized that the minister had a point. He also realized that the bias that needed to be removed from the equation may in fact be his own.

Interestingly, this friend in a prior park where we both worked had invited countless guest speakers from the park’s affiliated Native American tribes to speak. He had encouraged speakers to share their unique points of view about the park and its history. He found great value in their viewpoints and so did the public. He also knew that this added value and didn’t come at the expense of the science that helped to explain the resource.

I asked him, “What’s the difference between honoring the Native American point of view and not honoring the creationist one?” After thinking about the question for a while, he answered, “My personal history with Christianity and its teachings.”

This realization has since freed up my friend to work on improving the park’s relationship with the local community and its leaders.

There are some resources that make putting aside personal bias even harder. Our national parks contain a great number of units that routinely interpret controversial issues. I have worked in some of these places and know that it’s often hard to remain the professional interpreter that I aspire to be.

The primary reason for this is, as Aristotle famously said, “Man is by nature a political animal.” I would argue that we are more than that, but there is no doubt that our political beliefs and desire to see them fulfilled play a huge role in who we are as individuals and how we behave.

Generally, our behavior at work is no exception. The two issues that get me the most fired up are climate change and immigration. I have often been tempted to use my job to advocate for my beliefs. Luckily, I have been able to avoid this pratfall because I have had good supervisors who continually reminded me of the fundamental principles of the profession: “The visitor is sovereign” and “all points of view are valid and should be honored.”

At the end of the day, I believe that we are best serving ourselves and our profession when we acknowledge the biases that impact our work, and we understand that giving multiple perspectives their due doesn’t take anything away from the validity of the primary way we interpret our resources. Nor does it mean that we are sacrificing our own beliefs. Presenting multiple points of view and respecting visitors sovereignty makes us legitimate as professionals and ensures that all of the truths that our great resources possess are able to shine.

If we interpreters are hoping to practice what we preach, we must always be on guard to make sure we are not preaching. In other words, we must not only talk the talk, we must walk the walk!

Protection

Positive Energy: A Key to Retaining Rangers — I received a disappointing phone call from a respected fellow ranger and friend who told me of his plan to transfer to the U.S. Forest Service.

I have known him for several years, and his wealth of knowledge, superior instructor skills and overall excellence in rangering will be sorely missed by the National Park Service.

His was the fourth such phone call in a month as two other friends transferred to the Forest Service and a third to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Another friend in FLETC for the basic training course (and relatively new to the NPS) told me about his general dissatisfaction with rangering in the NPS and subsequent urgings to explore employment with our sister agencies. After some lengthy debate and a timely inquiry from a well-respected chief ranger as to how the NPS might keep him, he confided that he’ll “hang in there” a little longer to see if things improve.

This trend is nothing new to the Park Service. We’ve been losing top-notch rangers to other bureaus for decades. In my first five years with the NPS, I recall several rangers who transferred to the Bureau of Land Management. Several wildland firefighters answered the call of state agencies just to secure full-time jobs.

The bottom line is that the NPS is losing quality rangers.

There will always be a new crop of young people knocking on the door looking to be the next generation, but when we lose seasoned rangers with wide-based skills, we lose an institutional memory that takes years to rebuild.

Of course, we need young blood among our ranger ranks. We’re reminded of this by Horace Albright’s timeless admonition: “Do not let the Service become just another government bureau; keep it youthful, vigorous, clean and strong.”

Along with the incoming class, though, we need to retain those rangers who have already filled so many vital niches throughout our national ranger program: in their home parks, on a national team, on firelines, search-and-rescue teams and in training rooms.

We must retain superior rangers, but how? Retaining exceptional rangers is a complicated endeavor because each individual is motivated by a different set of variables, and it’s challenging to address the needs of everyone.

I’ve asked each of my friends who are hanging up their national park hat why they’re doing it. Their answers include a higher pay grade at the journeyman level, a stovepiped chain of command, fewer non-law enforcement duties and responsibilities, personality conflicts at their previous NPS workplace, or even issues as simple as geography.

Again, each person is different. Some have no problem with an issue or issues that others might have rigorous objections to. Others have hang-ups with every factor I listed above and some I omitted.

It gets even more complicated, though. As an agency and as a professional corps of rangers, we have to ask what might be an even more difficult question: In the case of some of these folks who’ve made up their minds that they simply don’t want to be a ranger in the NPS any longer, do we really want to retain them regardless of how outstanding officers may be?

The reality is that this job isn’t for everyone. It takes a special breed to answer the call of rangering in the Park Service.

We need to find that special breed of ranger, show them why the NPS is such a terrific agency to work for and motivate them to stay for the long-haul.

We have the coolest job in the world. As a crew of rangers from coast to coast, let’s all remind each other of this core tenet that helps mold us into a vital part of the world’s most premier conservation workforce.

A little positive energy goes a long way to keeping our fellow rangers among us. Imagine how your own workplace would be if every employee was 100 percent motivated and jazzed to work there.

If you asked me to list all the reasons rangering in the NPS is the greatest job in the world, I might run out of room. I’m going to try to squeeze them into my next column in Ranger magazine.

This column will resume in the next issue.

NOTE: If you work in resource management and are interested in becoming a columnist in this space, please contact the editor at fordedit@aol.com.