Lonely Rangers in Paradise
A blizzard of woes is making life miserable for parks workers
It is sunup on Sunday in Yellowstone National Park and ranger Mona Divine is exhausted. She has worked an average of 15 hours for 14 consecutive days, supervising a district that includes three developed areas of campgrounds, stores and hotels, 350,000 acres of rugged backcountry and the northern half of Yellowstone Lake. She has investigated bison gorings, grizzly incursions, a dormitory fire and illegal drug use. She has ticketed speeders, arrested drunk drivers, pulled tourists from wrecked cars and helped rescue a hiker who fell into a gorge. She has also served as logistics chief for a firefighting crew working a stubborn 200-acre blaze near Pelican Creek. It has been a grueling fortnight.
As Divine begins another workday, even the ethereal beauty of a misty dawn on Yellowstone Lake fails to prompt her usual pause to savor the scene and contemplate the pleasures of working in one of America's crown jewel national parks. "It's hard to find motivation and satisfaction when you're strung out on a thin wire," she says. "You begin to wonder if it's worth it. What's the point of living here if you can't enjoy it?"
Sagging morale. When a dedicated ranger like Divine complains, there's trouble in paradise. At the end of its 75th year, the National Park Service is beset with a host of problems, none more serious than sagging morale. Meager salaries, substandard housing, lack of advancement opportunities and overwork have left the elite ranger corps angry and dispirited. The 10-year legacy of neglect by the Reagan and Bush administrations also leaves the system's infrastructure--roads, buildings and utilities--badly in need of repair. Says 15-year veteran Joan Anzelmo: "The parks are in crisis. We have more visitors, more demands. Budgets are being eaten up by inflation. Staffs are being cut. Everybody's maxed out."
In their green and gray uniforms and Smokey the Bear hats, the 12,000 federal park rangers are enduring symbols of America's finest conservation ethic, projecting an image as solid as Mount Rushmore and as reassuring as Old Faithful. Their basic mission used to be either law enforcement or interpretation--leading visitors on nature hikes. As park use has increased, so have public demands, and today's ranger may be called upon to investigate a rape, track a bear, stage a drug bust, deliver a history lecture, resuscitate a heart patient, supervise an archaeological dig or write a research paper. Yellowstone chief ranger Dan Sholly's job description is: "psychologist, policeman, firefighter, animal handler, naturalist, medic, parent, guide, scholar, clerk and cowboy--all in one day."
Rangers also work to provide a decent standard of living for their families, perhaps aspire to buy their own homes. But these goals are increasingly out of reach. Take salaries. Park rangers start at $15,808 a year, about $5,000 less than rookie police officers or firefighters. Some 70 percent of rangers have college degrees, yet the average salary is only about $25,000--modest recompense for a 10- to 15-year veteran.
Supervising rangers make more, but the slots are scarce. Before a recent promotion, Mona Divine had 15 officers on her patrol staff--half her normal complement--and earned about $31,000 a year. But rangers dedicated to traditional backcountry patrol--snaring poachers, checking trails, rescuing tenderfoots--languish at the lower pay levels. So do interpretive rangers--biologists, wildlife specialists, cultural resource experts--often with graduate degrees. They do vital conservation or historical research and guide visitors on tours of Yellowstone geysers, Antietam battle sites and Ellis Island artifacts. Says Republican Rep. Constance Morella of Maryland: "One cannot feed a family on sunsets."
A membership survey by the Association of National Park Rangers amassed a litany of complaints, particularly from those assigned to parks in expensive urban areas like New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, D.C. Some rangers said they relied on food stamps, queued for government surplus commodities or bought clothes at thrift stores. More than a third said they depended on financial help from parents, and 70 percent couldn't make ends meet without their spouses working. "I have run through my life savings in a matter of two years," wrote one ranger. Complained another: "We can save less than $20 a month. My child will never be able to go to college. I'll probably never be able to own my own house."
Ramshackle quarters. National-park housing often resembles slums. More than half of the 5,200 units are in "fair to poor or obsolete condition," according to park-service Director James Ridenour. Rangers double up in ramshackle 25-year-old trailer homes with tiny, 10-gallon hot water tanks. Many parks have rows of uninsulated one-room apartments with plywood walls and last-gasp appliances. Yellowstone still has units built as temporary housing by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. Housing for the resident ranger on San Miguel Island at Channel Islands National Park off Santa Barbara, Calif., is a converted metal shipping container, 20 feet by 8 feet. The plumbing consists of a water tank feeding an indoor sink and an outdoor shower; there is a pit toilet.
The park service estimates that $546 million is needed to build new housing and rehabilitate existing homes; an additional $1.5 billion is needed to repair decrepit roads and replace old sewage, water and electrical systems. With Congress unlikely to approve a major budget increase, relief could lie in a bill from Rep. Wayne Owens, a Utah Democrat, that would permit the service to raise private funds. The National Parks and Conservation Association suggests raising fees for concessionaires and park visitors.
Rangers are also hard pressed by the increasing volume of visitors. The annual total has leapt from 172 million in 1970 to an estimated 267.2 million last year. Fully 109 new park units--from Alaskan wilderness to urban historic sites--have been added to the system. Despite this enormous growth, the permanent ranger force has remained static at 3,200 for 20 years. And tight budgets have cut the seasonal ranger force from 12,000 to 9,000 over the past decade.
This means less protection for visitors and resources in the system's 359 units. Nevada's Lake Mead National Recreation Area once had 12 lifeguards; now, visitors swim at their own risk. At Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan, a ranger force of 80 has been cut to 14. Alaska's 12.6 million-acre Wrangell-St. Elias National Park--the biggest in the system--has only three rangers on full-time patrol. Vagrants constantly break into the Martin Luther King Jr. birthplace in Atlanta, seeking shelter and sometimes vandalizing the national historic site.
In 1990, there were 16 murders in national parks--double the total in 1989--including the slaying of a ranger at Gulf Islands National Seashore in Mississippi. The 1990 crime sheet also includes 44 rapes, 147 armed robberies and 201 serious assaults. Urban-style violence at Yosemite often fills the park's 18-cell jail on summer weekends. Rangers there have taken to wearing bulletproof vests and are being issued semiautomatic pistols.
Low pay, poor housing, changing conditions and overwork have taken their toll. In the 1970s, the annual job turnover among rangers was a scant 3 percent. Today, it averages 8 percent and up to 20 percent in urban areas. Park rangers are defecting to other federal agencies like the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Army Corps of Engineers. The jobs have less glamour, but they offer higher pay, quicker promotions and better retirement benefits.
With her experience in law enforcement and firefighting, advanced life support and cardiac emergency care and river, cave and mountain rescue, Yellowstone's Mona Divine could leave the park service tomorrow and find a more lucrative job. She might be tempted, but she won't quit. When you have saved lives, survived a wilderness airplane crash while on duty and been rousted from bed at 4 a.m.--after an hour's sleep--by a visitor eager to photograph a yellow-bellied marmot, giving up the ranger's role isn't easy. "I love the life," she says. "I'm hoping things will improve."
This story appears in the January 13, 1992 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.