Just to be clear: the sequestration and associated mandatory budget cuts will almost certainly result in fewer rangers, among other employees. All hiring --both permanent and seasonal -- is currently frozen waiting to see what develops. Hiring plans are stopped because parks don't have any idea what their budget will look like.

Because seasonal positions are, essentially, discretionary spending, that's what's easiest to cut when there's budget cuts. So that means fewer backcountry rangers, fewer trail crew, fewer maintenance employees in the frontcountry emptying trash cans and cleaning the restrooms.

This is really not a drill. It's a very real thing and the result will be further degradation of our parks. I saw a comment by one congressman who said the park service would just have to do "more with less." I get pretty tired of that attitude. For decades, a lot of pretty dedicated people have, in fact, been doing more with less. The NPS is at the point now where it's going to be doing less with less.

I also have the greatest respect for volunteers, but I fear even Bee underestimates what's involved in protecting parks. It's not just shooing people away from Giant Sequoia roots. As I'm sure everyone here knows, there's a huge amount of training and skill involved in all aspects of every job working in a park -- whether as a ranger or cleaning restrooms. Law enforcement, medical response, fire -- both structural and wildland, search and rescue done by volunteers?! And trail crew is an incredibly difficult, injury-prone and skilled job. Like almost all NPS jobs, you just can't replace that with volunteers -- folks who just show up for a few weeks or maybe even a whole season. It just doesn't work.

And there's also a larger issue: we as a society should pay for the work that people do. Somehow there's this attitude, especially in the public sector, that these "glamorous" jobs like being a ranger are so much fun that, as I've often been told, I should be paying for the privilege of doing it. No. I think protecting our parks is an important and vital job to society. I'm happy to do it and grateful we have a country that has national parks. But it's a job and it should be compensated like any other job.

Also, to be semi-political, it's an absurd proposition to be cutting jobs of any kind in the midst of a weak recovery from the recession. Europe is tanking precisely because they're following a draconian policy of austerity despite clear evidence it's not working. When you lay people off, they're not going to spend money, they're not going to earn money to pay taxes and the country goes into a slow death spiral. The debt and deficit are not the current crisis, unemployment is. The solution is for sure not to make it worse.

George


None of the views expressed here in any way represent those of the unidentified agency that I work for or, often, reality. It's just me, fired up by coffee and powerful prose.