20071014 Picture Perfect

20071014 Picture Perfect

Picture it: a park ranger naturalist in one of our nation’s premier national parks like Yellowstone or Sequoia, flat hat silhouetted against the ephemeral oranges and reds of the setting sun, helping park visitors to make the most of their visits to one of America’s wonders. What a great job! Wouldn’t we all like to have it? The job is so good that the rangers work for free, almost. Seasonal rangers anyway.

Since the job is just playing for pay, some say that seasonal park rangers must be willing to take some compensation in the forms of sunrises and sunsets. Sounds good, but when the doctor wants payment for setting your broken leg, half of that aforementioned sunset may not be sufficient. In twenty or thirty years, the rest home may not accept sunrises. And how would you store their value until then? Banks accept dollars, pesos, and euros, but sunrises and sunsets?

For this reason, some seasonal rangers would like to become permanent employees of the National Park Service. Just who do they think they are? They have wonderful jobs in majestic places, and yet have the audacity to desire health benefits. On top of that, they’d like retirement benefits and some job security. Now that’s going too far. But still some of them try.

Seasonal naturalists can walk some rocky trails, but the path to permanent employment requires technical climbing skills or the key to the secret passageway. A secret passageway? Can preferential treatment for some be given by the government that espouses equal opportunity? You betcha. Status as a veteran, the spouse of a permanent employee, a disabled person, or a particular gender, race, or ethnicity can, in some cases, unlock the passageway to a permanent job. While other applicants perhaps more qualified on merit alone struggle up the switchbacks, these special people stride easily through a level tunnel constructed especially for them. Some very good people never make it over the mountain pass the hard way and eventually leave the service. I can think of two right off the bat, Holly and Tia.

Holly and I worked together my first winter season at the Everglades almost nine years ago, where we were both campground rangers trying to get our feet in the interpretive door. Holly had been several summer seasons an interpreter at Yellowstone. Naturally outgoing and charismatic, Holly also wrote wonderful programs. How do I know? I read her script for her campfire program on, you guessed it, fire. Or more specifically, fire ecology. Holly’s programs are so good that to this day Yellowstone uses videotapes of her performances as part of training for new seasonal interpreters.

Holly, a woman in her 20s when we met, enjoyed being a seasonal but ultimately was looking for a career. She tried for a permanent interpretive position with the park service for some time, diligently dotting the eyes and crossing the tees on her applications. No luck. Or is it luck?

Tia and I met my very first season with the National Park Service, a magical summer in Sequoia National Park. I drove the park garbage truck. She was at the top of her game as a seasonal naturalist. I wanted to be a naturalist so in my off time I attended ranger programs including several of Tia's.

Tia is as good as they get. She grabs the audience and does not let them go. More importantly they do not want to leave. Her Giant Sequoia ecology walk stands as the finest single interpretive program I have ever seen. At each stop she adopted a different persona, including Mother Nature, a college professor, and others with a minimum of props. We all wanted to see who she would be next, all the while learning about the natural history of the world’s largest trees.

Tia worked ten summers in Sequoia all told. She advanced to a supervisory level, helping to plan the summer season, scheduling a staff of 12 naturalists working multiple venues with only three cars. Eventually she became a GS-9 level seasonal, almost unheard of in the park service.

Like Holly, Tia tried for many years to get a permanent position as an NPS interpreter. Time and time again someone else was chosen—a veteran, a spouse of an existing permanent employee, and even some well-qualified people. OK, I'll admit that the third class is not necessarily mutually exclusive from the first two.

Both of these wonderful interpeters went on to permanent jobs elsewhere. Holly eventually found permanent work with West Eugene Wetlands, a non-profit partnership of various governmental agencies and other non-profits dedicated to the preservation of, you guessed it again, wetlands. She serves as the environmental education coordinator. Tia stayed with the Department of the Interior but jumped agencies to the US Fish & Wildlife Service. She started her first permanent government job as the volunteer coordinator for a complex of wildlife refuges in the San Francisco Bay area. More recently she became an environmental education specialist, her forte, with the same complex.

The point of all of this is that the National Park Service had the chance to benefit from possibly lifelong service from these two fine interpreters, a couple of the finest and most dedicated. The Service passed. Repeatedly. What’s wrong with this picture?