In the early days of US national parks, rangers did it all–built trails and roads, caught poachers, protected visitors from wildlife and wildlife from visitors, fought wildland fires, patrolled miles of park border. The legend of the jack of all trades national park ranger persists, but most modern National Park Service employees are specialized, working in five ranger careers that oversee various aspects of their park.
In this essay, I’ll explain the most common national park divisions and what the rangers who work in them do. If you’re looking for an NPS career for yourself or someone else, or just curious about what rangers do, you’ll find that information below.
1. Law Enforcement
Let’s begin with the classics. Often when people think “park ranger” they imagine a person who prevents people from feeding or harassing wildlife, patrols the backcountry on horseback, fights forest fires, provides emergency medical assistance to visitors, or rescues folks in danger. For the most part, all of these duties and many more fall under the purview of US national park law enforcement.
For many people the terms “law enforcement” or “cop” can have a negative connotation, evoking fear or anger. National park law enforcement rangers often do a lot more than enforce laws, though, and so are a different breed from your everyday cop. I have witnessed them dangle from a helicopter to rescue hikers trapped by a rock fall, seen them spend hours hiking out the remains of a victim of a tragic accident. I have also known them to hand out speeding tickets like Halloween candy and brag about making an arrest.
It’s really your call how you feel about national park law enforcement, but in many ways their jobs are most like what people mean when they think of the mythical “park ranger.” They protect the park and all it contains, sometimes at great personal risk to themselves, and if you are ever in danger in a national park, you will want them on your side.
2. Maintenance
For the most part, maintenance workers in US national parks do not have the official job title “Park Ranger.” However, what they do is as integral to the functioning of national parks as any ranger.
Have you ever used a bathroom in a national park? Hiked a trail? Driven a road? Camped in a campground? Tossed a piece of waste in a trash bin, filled a water bottle at a sink, or walked through a clean visitor center? If yes, then you my friend have been the beneficiary of the efforts of park maintenance staff.
Someone has to empty the outhouse, keep the lights running, or mow that roadside. In my experience, the folks who do this work do it with the pride and care befitting the national treasures they are tasked with maintaining.
Over the nine years I spent working in national parks, I listened to the stories of countless maintenance workers. They enjoyed fixing our cars or clearing our trails so that the rest of us could do our jobs and visitors could enjoy the parks. For the most part, their complaints were about lack of funding, scant staffing, and not being able to maintain the park to the high standards they set. They wanted to do more.
The deferred maintenance backlog is a mouthful of words that amounts to a failure of our national leaders to adequately support these maintenance workers and the parks they maintain. By the end of the 2022 fiscal year, the dollar amount of critical repairs needed in US national parks had reached an estimated $22.3 billion. Our national park infrastructure is crumbling.
There is much to discuss on this topic, but for now I’ll simply say that the maintenance workers you meet in national parks are probably barely holding their parks together, so remember to thank them.
3. Natural and Cultural Resources
Ask any group of children if they like animals (as I have done many times) and every hand will go up. Some kids will tell you that they plan to work with animals when they grow up. Some adults (I’m shamelessly talking about myself now) plastered endangered species wallpaper on their walls as children and wore only t-shirts emblazoned with slogans about saving the rainforest (not that I was an environmentalist dork, or anything).
What I’m trying to say is that the natural resources (meaning all the nature the park protects) in US national parks are a big draw for young and old alike. For many people, the only reason to go to a national park is to spot the wildlife or hike under ancient trees festooned with moss or watch the sunset ignite a lake with a rainbow of color.
Most national parks have staff or even an entire division of employees that monitor, protect, or rehabilitate native plants or animals. Some parks have other park scientists–a geologist or ecologist or glaciologist. National parks are places of study and exploration for the sciences, helping advance our knowledge of the natural world.
Not all national parks oversee natural wonders. Many preserve culturally significant stories, sacred spaces, or historical or even prehistoric treasures. National parks employ archaeologists, historians, and preservationists.
On a nondescript hill in Southwest Virginia, sits a national park site devoted to the memory of Booker T. Washington. It was on that small patch of earth that Washington and his family were informed that they were no longer slaves, that they were now free people. The rangers at this park and others like it across the United States protect and preserve cultural artifacts and places that are integral to the story of America: who we are, who we once were, and who we hope to be.
4. Administration
Is anything more thrilling than a staff meeting? What about a staff meeting set in a national park, with a spectacular view visible between the coffee machine and the snack table?
I once attended a retirement party for a park service higher-up, and as a gift she was handed one of those viewfinders filled with a custom-made series of images. Instead of photos of our stunning park, the viewfinder memorialized the sights that this woman had most often seen at work. A dozen images of various boardrooms filled with seated, uniformed rangers, each emblazoned with a different title: “Safety Meeting, Division Chief Meeting, Training!” Meeting after meeting, all preserved for posterity, and all essential to the operation of a park as large and precious as the one this woman had almost never had time to enjoy.
Administration folks are the ones housed in offices, who stare at computers or sit around long wooden tables, walled off from the wonders of the park around them. They do the unglamorous work of making sure that parks continue to operate, from paying bills and hiring staff to managing budgets and making tough decisions about how the park will oversee its valuable resources.
Many of the senior folks in Administration began as seasonal park rangers or in the lower ranks of national parks and worked their way up to leadership positions. These are park service “lifers”, devoting themselves to what can be a challenging quest to protect the national treasures they love.
(Just a note: all NPS employees I’ve met do their work for love, even–and sometimes especially–the least glamorous work.)
5. Interpretation
True story: when I first applied for jobs as an interpretive national park ranger, I had no idea what the word “interpretation” meant, at least not in this context. When applications asked about my “interpretation” skills, I clicked the “Expert” button. Yep, whatever that was, I could do it.
What I learned once I stumbled into my first day of training as an interpretive ranger, was that the work of “interpretation” is translating, just as it sounds, but in this case not for a spoken language. I would be translating the language of mountains and glaciers, whales and eagles, long-dead historical figures and the artifacts and spaces they left behind.
Park interpreters try to evoke connections between park patrons and the things that the park is tasked with protecting. It is work that requires some artistry, a lot of knowledge about the park’s resources, and a willing and generous audience.
I will not wax poetic here about the methods and difficulties of making trees talk to people. Suffice it to say, I loved my job as an interpretive ranger, but it was also incredibly challenging.
Interpreters are the folks you most often interact with at national parks. The ones who conduct the amphitheater talks or bird walks. The people who answer your questions at the visitor center or roam the most popular trails, in case you have a question while out in the park.
Interpreters are the rangers who point you to the restroom after a long drive with a backseat full of screaming kids, all of you irritated, hot, and tired. (Hi, that was probably me you yelled at. I forgive you.)
Interpretive rangers are also the people who tell you the rules, who warn you when there’s a potential for flash flooding or when a bear’s been sniffing around the campground. Sometimes interpreters are the ones who ask you to put your dog on a leash, not feed the wildlife, or stop stepping on the fragile subalpine flowers (yep, that was also probably me–thanks for your compliance).
Interpretation is crowd-pleasing and crowd-control. It is not always enjoyable work (there is literally a sign above your head telling you where the bathroom is!), but, in my biased opinion, it can be the most enjoyable work in a park too.
As an interpretive park ranger, I enjoyed hours each day outside, fed the nature nerd in me plant and bird and geology facts, and got to be creative with words. Creative. With words. About nature. Many days being an interpretive ranger felt like doing a job I had dreamed up.
Conclusion
There are many kinds of US national park employees, many kinds of rangers. Each of them has an expertise and loves their work, as I did. Even if they are not all technically called “rangers,” all are vital to the parks that you love, as indispensable as the antiques or canyons or moose you came to see.
There are so many ways for people who love national parks to be of service to them. If you have a particular skill or gift or calling that leads you to want to work in national parks, then one of these careers may be for you.
For additional information, check out the essay “How to Become a National Park Ranger.”