The Life of a Park Ranger

Submitted by jersu on July 7, 2006 - 11:54am

In recent days there have been a few articles profiling the jobs of park rangers in our National Parks. The three articles below give a nice representation of the range of responsibilities that rangers have in an urban area, the back country, and the front country.

USA Today: D.C. monuments' point man
WASHINGTON - They're part tour guide, traffic cop, medic and peacekeeper. And for most National Park Service rangers, summer is high season for crowd control.

Salt Lake Tribune: A ranger's day is filled with diversity and challenges at Utah's most popular park
ZION NATIONAL PARK - Although he spends most of his patrol alone, National Park Service ranger Kean Mihata rarely gets lonely.

Salt Lake Tribune: Rugged park is ranger's classroom
CANYONLANDS NATIONAL PARK - Dust rolls off the dry trail as ranger Michelle Busbee slowly navigates the Jeep Cherokee up the steep, rocky incline toward Elephant Hill in the Needles District of Canyonlands. It is 10 a.m., and Busbee has been on the job for four hours, checking permits on vehicles left at the park's main trailheads, scrutinizing the trailhead registers to make sure hikers have returned on schedule.

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