Employee Wellness

When ANPR’s Board of Directors met during the 2024 Ranger Rendezvous in Rapid City,
S.D., we collectively agreed on one thing: Our Strategic Plan needed to be more focused so each board member had defined goals for the year.

During those discussions, and subsequent meetings with our Board Member for Strategic Planning, Lauren DeGennaro, and monthly board meetings, a new Strategic Plan has been developed to help guide us into 2025 and beyond.

The theme for 2025: “We Are Your People”

The priorities for 2025:

 Employee Wellness – Support wellness for the employees of the National Park Service. This is a new and more focused theme that, unfortunately, is going to be even more important given the recent events since the Jan. 20, 2025, inauguration.

Perpetuate – Sustain ANPR’s operations so that they will continue to provide value to our members long into the future. This is an ongoing priority that cannot be neglected if ANPR is to sustain its future.

The entire strategic plan can be found by logging onto our members-only side of the website. Here are some highlights:

ANPR’s Vision:

The Association of National Park Rangers is an organization created to communicate for, about, and with National Park Service employees of all disciplines; to promote and enhance the professions, spirit, and mission of National Park Service employees; to support management and the perpetuation of the National Park Service and the National Park System; and to provide a forum for professional enrichment.

Recognized and respected as truthful, energetic, non-partisan, and capable professionals, the Association functions as the pre-eminent organization looking out for, supporting, and advocating for the National Park Service workforce. The Association is a respected voice for the needs and concerns of the employees at all levels, working with agency leadership to improve the employment environment of these public servants that dedicate their professional lives, and often their entire lives, to the mission of the National Park Service. National park units are place-based icons of American heritage, and therefore the vast majority of the employees of the NPS must live where the parks are, often in remote, challenging, and expensive situations. The Association recognizes and articulates that for most NPS employees, the mission of the National Park System is the primary motivator, and without a dedicated workforce, the agency – and the American people – will fail at the mission. Nonetheless, as the workforce dwindles in size, as the bureaucratic processes get more burdensome, and as the cost of living surrounding many national parks skyrockets, working for the NPS no longer provides the quality of life that it once did, and the wellness of employees is rapidly declining. This is a growing crisis, and the Association raises the issues to agency leadership, kindred organizations, and others as an articulate and enthusiastic advocate for positive change and ambitious but feasible strategies that will help the agency, and its stewards succeed.

ANPR’s Values:

We are devoted to sustaining a vigorous and an effective National Park Service workforce. The commitment that we promote is rooted in the values that we as an organization represent. These values are:

Respect: We show appreciation of others based on their abilities, qualities, and achievements.

Integrity: We are committed to honesty, ethics, and doing the right thing, even when faced with challenges or temptations.

Empathy: We will strive to understand, be aware of, be sensitive to, and vicariously experience the feelings, thoughts, and experience of others.

Inclusive: We welcome and embrace the involvement of all employees in the National Park Service - regardless of their job classifications or areas of work – whom we deem to be "Rangers at Heart."

Professionalism” We will strive to consistently achieve high standards, in the work that we do and the way we behave.

Honest Communication: We will strive to provide honest and forthright communication of issues, needs and information in all that we do.

Guiding Principles of the Association:

In carrying out our efforts to support the wellness of National Park Service employees, we will be guided by these principles:

We will uncompromisingly defend the mission of the National Park Service.

We will recognize that the National Park Service is the stewardship guardian of places that embody irreplaceable beauty, events and ideas that define the nation’s character—those places that deserve the highest levels of reverence and protection—we will make affirmative, principled, factual arguments that call attention to what the nation cannot afford to lose—the heritage it has placed in trust for future generations.

We will articulate and document case studies, the conditions under which National Park Service employees work, and where they are resident in the parks, the living conditions.

 We will focus on significant issues associated with living and working conditions, including, but not limited to: the hiring processes, supervision and leadership, mentoring, training and professional development, employee housing, pay equity, diversity and inclusion, civility and respect.

We recognize the budgets and staffing are important and we will work to show how these factors are affecting employee wellness.

We recognize that not all challenges have simple solutions, and not all can be adequately addressed at once. The Association will strategically allocate its energy and resources to the issues its membership determines to be the places where it can make a significant difference.

We will strive to work with the National Park Service and its leadership, and when we are critical, will always strive to be constructive and respectful.

We will strive to model the kind of strong organization we seek the National Park Service to be, demonstrating through actions our commitment to diversity, inclusion, fairness, and civility.

We will provide opportunities within the Association for members to develop skills and their own leadership capacity which will serve them well in their National Park Service careers and in their lives.

We will be allies with like-minded organizations on issues of mutual concern.

We will be neither a union nor a partisan organization.