In his State of the Association address, ANPR President Lee Werst made these remarks Oct. 7, 2007, in Park City, Utah, at the annual Ranger Rendezvous.

Welcome to Park City and the 30th anniversary Ranger Rendezvous. Planning and coordinating a Rendezvous requires a tremendous amount of work, and I would like to thank Cordell Roy and Dan Moses for all they have done to make this one possible.

This Rendezvous will be the last time I address the membership as president. The first time, in Rapid City in 2004, I told you that my main concerns would be membership and financial stabilization. These remain my main concerns at this Rendezvous, and we have been fortunate to have dedicated board members who have greatly assisted in improving those areas.

When discussing membership numbers it has been common during my time with the organization to look at 1,000 as a sort of standard to meet. If membership dropped below that number there has been a common perception that ANPR is in trouble, and we have been below 1,000 for several years now. However, I am happy to report that membership has been on the rise this past year and we have once again surpassed 1,000 members. I believe this increase in membership has come about for several reasons. But perhaps the most important, accounting for about 90 new members, was the introduction of ANPR’s seasonal health insurance program. All accounts indicate that this has been a vastly successful endeavor that has not only increased our membership, but also provided limited health care coverage to an extremely important segment of our work force, seasonals. This program was made possible through the hard work of board member Fred Koegler and has been sustained through the dedication of Teresa Ford, who has processed the paperwork at the business office, and Treasurer Liz Roberts who maintained payments with the insurance company. I would like to thank these individuals on behalf of the membership for the work they have done on behalf of ANPR. With anticipation of many more seasonals coming on board next year, this program will provide a valuable service to many more and help to bring new blood into the organization.

We must not forget, however, that we need to bring in new membership from other areas within the National Park Service. Last year in Coeur d’Alene ANPR was afforded an opportunity to discover what NPS employees thought were their most important concerns and aspirations. Mike Finley challenged ANPR to conduct a survey of employees within 90 days and backed it up with $10,000 from the Turner Foundation. A committee of dedicated members met that challenge, completing the survey on time. It has provided ANPR with information that will help us decide on a direction and how we can be relevant to NPS employees.

I would like to thank Mike Finley and the Turner Foundation for this great opportunity. I would also like to thank Dick Martin and the rest of the committee that worked on this project for bringing it to fruition. It is now for us to use this information to make ANPR an organization that is viewed by the entire NPS workforce as the association that represents their interests and concerns, and by doing so, increase our membership.

In the area of finances I believe it is well known that we have had some difficult times over the last several years. We have eliminated an executive director position and dropped our old business office as we brought our expenses under control. I again offer my thanks to Teresa Ford and Liz Roberts for taking on the lion’s share of the work that had been done by the old business office. I am now confident that ANPR can, at a minimum, count on breaking even on an annual basis, leaving about $20,000 in the bank that we can now start to look at for investment in order to make it grow faster. We must, however, increase our efforts in seeking grants and sponsorship in order to allow the funds we have to work for us without having to worry about drawing upon it in the vent of an emergency.

In conclusion, I would say that ANPR is in a stronger position than it was one year ago, and I am sure the next year will see more success come our way. Thank you.

In a speech delivered Oct. 7, 2007, incoming ANPR President Scot McElveen gave his vision of ANPR’s future to attendees at the annual Rendezvous, held in Park City, Utah.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for supporting ANPR by your attendance at Ranger Rendezvous. As many of you know Ranger Rendezvous is our professional, annual conference, and a percentage of ANPR’s operating funds will come from the money we take in here in Park City. I strongly encourage you to continue that support in 2008 at Ranger Rendezvous in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

I think one of the reasons I’m speaking today is to describe my personal vision of what ANPR will look like from 2008 – 2010. These (hold up glasses) should be the first clue that my vision isn’t what it once was. Hopefully you and I and the rest of our members can come together with ideas and action ideas to redirect our future and move ANPR forward. In this hour I’d like to speak some about my perceptions of ANPR, of the National Park Service including its employees, and of the National Park System. I hope to do that in about 30 or 45 minutes, so if you have questions or comments about what I’m saying, feel free to interject them at any time or save them until the end, whichever you are most comfortable with.

I joined ANPR in 1982 while working at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I was almost finished with a seven-month seasonal job and as luck would have it, Ranger Rendezvous was being held at Fontana Village, North Carolina, about six miles away from the ranger station I worked and lived at.

My supervisor told me about Ranger Rendezvous, saying attending might be a good way to meet supervisors from other parks that I’d be applying to the next year. He also mentioned something about beer and that seemed relatively important to a 25-year-old who’d been living in a dry county for six months.

I have several memories from that Rendezvous. First was the sight of little huddles of younger employees as they followed around those who might hire seasonals. It kind of looked a little like a rugby match. Second, the beer truck with several taps sitting just outside of the meeting room because it was not legal in that county to have it being dispensed inside. Third, and most importantly, was the passion with which ANPR members discussed their issues and positions, sometimes their faces getting visibly flushed as they explained their convictions. I miss those passionate discussions and I will be soliciting and introducing ideas and action items that I hope will bring about their return.

You’ve just heard Lee’s (Werst) perceptions (see page 1) of the state of ANPR. Let me add some of my own perceptions and perhaps test them against some perceptions that you may hold.

Since our highest membership numbers in 1994 of around 1,700, our membership has been in a slow, steady decline to around 950. Just recently we’ve moved back up over 1,000 thanks in large part to Fred Koegler’s tenacity in locating a health insurance plan that members can purchase. But we still are not attracting enough members who are early in their careers.

The past four ANPR presidents have run unopposed for office, which reveals and demonstrates to me a lack of enthusiasm and creativity in our organization.

Ranger Rendezvous attendance is stagnant. Where we once drew an attendance of 250-400 for almost every Rendezvous in the West, we now draw somewhere around 100 no matter where Rendezvous is held.

It has been four years since the NPS director spoke at a Ranger Rendezvous when at one time it was an opportunity that no NPS director would pass up. I can also remember when members of the WASO directorate were at every Ranger Rendezvous explaining the latest national programs, plans or decisions on professional issues in resources management, interpretation, protection, administration, maintenance, fees, fire and more. And I want to personally thank folks like Walt Dabney, Jim Brady, Dick Martin, Bill Sanders, Corky Mayo, Mike Soukup, Dennis Burnett and others who willingly stood, sometimes before hostile attendees, to listen and explain.

The absence of these higher-level managers and professional specialists confirms in my mind that ANPR has largely become irrelevant to NPS decision makers, and this is exactly the opposite outcome that the “original ANPR 33” organized for in 1977. Let’s remember that in addition to the social component of seeing old friends and meeting new ones at Ranger Rendezvous, my understanding is that the “original ANPR 33” organized because they felt that senior NPS managers in regional offices and in Washington were not getting adequate decision-making information from the field employees in parks through the official chain in command. And that if they did, decisions made concerning park operations and the NPS would more accurately reflect the needs on the ground in the parks.

Pretty idealistic, huh? There is nothing wrong with that 1977 idealism, folks. We need more! James Carville, political consultant, has said, “If you didn’t have some sense of idealism, then what is there to sustain you?” ANPR needs more!

So, given these challenges are there actions we can take or positions we can advocate that enhance ANPR’s current standing and perhaps even modify the culture of the NPS? To begin to answer this question I believe we have to decide what it is we want ANPR to be. Think about why you joined ANPR and what has or is likely to keep you as a member. There has always been some tension between those members who would steer us toward a more social organization — seeing old friends, making new ones, creating social opportunities for potential members early in their careers, and having more fun activities at Ranger Rendezvous.

Then there are those who wish ANPR to be more of an advocacy organization for professional and National Park System issues. Over the last two decades I’ve spoken to disillusioned and lapsed members in both these camps. Personally, I have always wanted ANPR to be a stronger advocate for the resources and values defined in the NPS Organic Act. While I do enjoy the social part of ANPR, advocacy for park resources, values and NPS employees is what has kept me mostly interested, and lack of attention to advocacy has occasionally kept me disinterested in ANPR.

There are advocacy issues on the horizon for us, but for you folks who want to see ANPR be more fun and more social, I’m telling you right now that I need your help. Propose a social activity for Ranger Rendezvous that you’d like to see happen and then volunteer to organize it. We’ve had dances, talent contests, piano sing-alongs, field trips and mini-Rendezvous. Or organize a local ANPR event like an in-park service project, a World Ranger Day event or some other local event — and invite the president to come! We can have social events like we once did but these need volunteers to organize and implement them. For those of you who find yourself more on the advocacy side of the ANPR aisle, what specific issues do you think we should advocate for? Would greater advocacy by ANPR lead to more new members, closer communication with higher-level NPS decision makers, positive outcomes and a higher member retention rate? Possibly the best information we have to guide us on these questions is the recently completed, statistically valid ANPR survey of NPS employees.

And here let me take this opportunity to thank those who brought this survey to fruition. Mike Finley, retired NPS, past ANPR president and currently the president of the Turner Foundation, proposed the idea of the survey to ANPR and funded ANPR’s organization and implementation of the survey with a generous Turner Foundation grant of $10,000. Thank you, Mike! And then those ANPR members who constructed, implemented and analyzed the survey, a big thanks to Dick Martin, Barbara Goodman, Dave Anderson, Meg Weesner, Debra Hughson and Mark Saferstein.

But let’s get back to what the survey told us about the NPS, its employees and what they expect affiliated organizations like ANPR to do. Remember, this was a survey of potential members and that is important to us given that we’ve lost 40 percent of our membership base in the last 13 years.

Some 79 percent of employees responding said that “protecting the environment was their most important job and personal priority.” I believe we can strengthen our reputation and attract new members by embracing an advocacy role for park resources, both natural and cultural. This shouldn’t be a real stretch on our part because protecting the environment or protecting history is why many of us chose to work for the NPS in the first place. Help me select those resource protection issues that will best boost ANPR’s reputation and protect park resources.

The quantity and quality of NPS training was also identified as a concern for survey respondents. In previous decades ANPR has partnered with the NPS to offer Managerial Grid and other training courses. We should reinvigorate that training partnership and once again offer training in conjunction with Ranger Rendezvous.

We’ve tried training immediately before and after Rendezvous with limited benefit to ANPR. Perhaps it is time to offer training concurrent with Rendezvous and see if that cross-pollination benefits ANPR. Help me identify those training courses that will spark the most interest between NPS employees and ANPR.

Finally, the survey identified NPS budgets and staffing levels as a top concern of NPS employees. For several years I have been trying to consolidate an idea I’ve had for ANPR that for now I’ll call “Put Your Money Where the Mission Is.” This fund-raising idea would target the general public to donate dollars that would be used to provide temporary or term interpretive or protection rangers to parks, if and only if those parks were willing to meet certain performance and position management benchmarks. Does anyone in the audience believe that this is an idea worth pursuing?

I think we have some direction from this survey of NPS employees and their responses on the types of things that would entice them to join an affiliated organization like ANPR. But as I said earlier ANPR will have to make some changes in the role(s) we pursue and the methodology we choose if we are to survive.

Benjamin Franklin said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” So, if we in ANPR keep trying the same recruitment methods, continue shying away from controversial decisions that we perceive as harmful to the National Park System, or continue to run Ranger Rendezvous on the same format every year, why would we expect these efforts to result in new members, increased membership or increased clout with NPS and political decision makers?

The theme of this year’s Ranger Rendezvous, “Redirecting for the Future,” is appropriate for where we are as an organization. You should expect changes in ANPR in 2008, and if you don’t like those changes you should tell me so and tell me why. But staying the same is not an option, not if we are to survive.

I hope you will join me in Santa Fe from Dec. 10-14, 2008, to evaluate how some of those changes have worked out for ANPR and to enjoy the collaboration and camaraderie that have become a hallmark of Ranger Rendezvous and ANPR. Thank you.

Scot McElveen retired from the National Park Service in August 2007 after more than 25 years as a commissioned park ranger in 12 NPS units. During his career he served as chief ranger at John Day Fossil Beds, Harpers Ferry and Death Valley. His ANPR presidency runs from Jan. 1, 2008, through Dec. 31, 2010.