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Volunteer Labor At Olympic National Park And Outsourcing Ranger Tours At Cumberland Island National Seashore

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National parks, strapped for funding, are turning more to volunteer labor and outsourcing jobs previously conducted by rangers to make ends meet.

At Olympic National Park in Washington, officials have issued a call for volunteers to help with trail work up on Hurricane Ridge, while across the country at Cumberland Island National Seashore in Georgia the park is seeking someone to take over some ranger tours.

At Olympic, a $50,000 grant from Washington’s National Park Fund is underwriting the park's trail crew as it repairs and improves trails in the Hurricane Ridge area this month. In addition to funding the park’s trail crew for this work, the grant provides for including volunteers in the project, a park release seeking volunteers said. 

“September is a beautiful month in the Olympic National Park high country,” said Olympic Superintendent Sarah Creachbaum.  “We invite interested people to consider volunteering their time and efforts to upgrade the Hurricane Ridge area trails.” 

The work will focus on improving the trails’ walking surfaces and drainage features and will involve digging and some physical exertion.  Some revegetation work in the Hurricane Hill area is also planned.  Potential volunteers should contact Larry Lack, Trails Foreman for Olympic National Park at 360-565-3178 for more information.

At Cumberland Island, meanwhile, the park last week issued a prospectus seeking proposals for a contract to operate the Cumberland Island Ferry within the national seashore. Part of that contract, however, also calls for the winning company to take over the Lands and Legacies tours, in which rangers have used vehicles to take visitors to parts of the seashore not easily reached on foot.

The new concession contract is expected to be awarded in early 2015, and will be for a 10-year term. Details of the contract can be found here.

Comments

All this can be a two-edged sword.

On one side, the use of volunteers can help increase public participation and a greater sense of the value of our parks in the people who are interested enough to volunteer.  (Although it might be argued that because they are willing to volunteer, they already possess those qualities.)

On the other, it could lead back to the kind of thing I witnessed in Bryce Canyon in 2003 where, as a result of President Cheney's drive to "privatize" our parks, there were no rangers to be found in the visitor center.  Everyone behind the desk was wearing a Ford Motor Company T-shirt.

However, having said that, the idea of interpretation on a motor tour really is a lot different than using direct replacements for rangers.  It already is done on the shuttles in Zion -- where I was somewhat horrified last time I rode to discover that the often very entertaining and knowledgeable presentations by shuttle drivers had been replaced by a recorded message.

Again, we come back to one of my favorite sayings, "Whatever we do, let's use extreme caution!"


A library where I used to work had a golden rule -- don't ever use volunteers for a position you'd pay an employee for if money wasn't the issue. 

It's a slippery slope down towards, "why should we give you money to pay employees when you can get volunteers to do the work?"

Speaking as someone who's worked both as a volunteer and as a paid employee in the same organization, I have to agree wholeheartedly with the wisdom of the person at that library who created that rule.


The old saying, "there is no free lunch" applies to volunteeers in parks.  They need to be carefully selected, trained, and supervised.  Too many park areas forget this.

Rick


And in many parks, Rick, they need to be housed in some way.


They need to be carefully selected, trained, and supervised. (and housed)

Unlike paid employees?


In 1976, legislation was put in place to prevent the use of volunteers for law enforcement duties inside the national parks.  It seems like similar legislation needs to be enacted to prevent the use of volunteers for services traditionally provided by NPS professionals.  Otherwise, it's only a matter of time and budget when NPS interpretive/educational services are made up mostly of volunteers or contracted out to the private sector.  My fear is that once interpretive rangers are replaced by volunteers or concession employees, there will be no turning back, regardless of whether or not the NPS operational budget eventually improves.

By the way, isn't it true that the majority of current NPS volunteers are made up of a singular demographic, retired upper middle class white folks?  Of course, if in-park housing cannot be provided to those who would otherwise volunteer in parks, most volunteer positions will be dominated by retirees who bring their own RV homes with them, family members of employees who already reside in the park, and those who reside immediately outside the park.  

The present NPS interpretive plan, however, is to increase both opportunities to increase volunteers in the parks, and to enhance diversity within the NPS workforce.


Owen,

Other than putting paid NPS employees out I work, I fail to see the downside of using volunteers. Sounds like a bunch of job protectionism here to me. Must be the NTEU at work. 


I am with ecbuck, seems like little down side. It seems like a great way the grant was written to get the most done with the money provided. It also seems like it might not put anybody out of work because the grant may be work that wasn't going to be done with out grant money.


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