WASHINGTON -- National Park Service rangers still guide nature walks and offer information and advice to millions of visitors each year. These days, they also frequently are called upon to put their lives on the line to stop drug smugglers and apprehend violent criminals.
A series of attacks on rangers, including the fatal shooting in August of a ranger at Arizona’s Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and a scathing report on problems in the Interior Department’s law enforcement structure have officials looking at changes aimed at protecting rangers and park visitors.
Today’s rangers are armed, in some cases with M-16s. They remain spread thin, however, with fewer than 1,400 patrolling 84 million acres in 387 parks, monuments and historic sites that attract more than 400 million visitors annually.
And while the National Park Service has had an increased budget in recent years, it’s the bureaucracy that has increased, not the number of rangers in the field.
National Park Service Director Fran Mainella issued a set of directives this month to streamline the chain of command and patch holes in the rangers’ ranks that she said were nearing critical proportions.
Problems with crime arise when staffing shortages force rangers to patrol wide expanses alone, with backup many miles away, said Park Service Deputy Director Donald Murphy.
And drug traffickers, smugglers of illegal aliens and potential terrorists that rangers are expected to arrest, particularly in parks along the borders and coasts, are more prone to violence than ever, said Larry Parkinson, a former FBI assistant director.
Interior Secretary Gale Norton hired Parkinson in July as a deputy assistant secretary to shape law enforcement across the department.
In the last month alone, park rangers helped chase down and arrest an armed felon at Arches National Park in Utah, helped arrest a suspected methamphetamine maker at Pea Ridge National Military Park in Arkansas and made several drug arrests along the Mexican border.
“There’s no doubt about it that criminals are getting meaner,” said Randall Kendrick, executive director of the U.S. Park Ranger Lodge, a branch of the Fraternal Order of Police that represents park rangers. “But other agencies seem to have adapted or adjusted. The Park Service does not seem to be able to do this.”
National FBI statistics indicate rangers are assaulted more often than any other federal law enforcement officers, but many people dispute the accuracy of park statistics because the Park Service does not have a standard reporting procedure.
Different parks have different reporting standards, so some incidents are not reported.
Earlier this year, the Washington-based group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility released figures that the number of attacks, threats and incidents of harassment against park service employees had risen from 57 in 1999 to 80 in 2000 and to 222 in 2001.
A report by Interior Department Inspector General Earl Devaney said this year that the department’s law enforcement was in disarray, its crime statistics unreliable.
Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, called it “one of the most damning indictments of a federal law enforcement agency that I have ever read.”
Adopting a standard reporting system is one of the changes the department is making. Others include a field training program, in which rookie rangers start out patrolling alongside veterans; and assigning to chief rangers at parks responsibility over investigations and law enforcement matters, rather than having them answer to superintendents. The superintendents often lack law enforcement training, said Murphy, former director of California’s parks system.
The department also is preparing to ask Congress for more money to hire law enforcement officers, although the requests are still being worked out with Bush administration budget officials, Parkinson said.
Kendrick said part of the fight is making sure more money means more rangers. A 2000 study by the International Association of Chiefs of Police said that despite a 56 percent increase in the Park Service’s budget from 1994 to 1999, there had been an almost 9 percent decrease in the number of rangers.
Kendrick said along the Blue Ridge Parkway, where he worked, the administrative staff has doubled since 1970 while the number of rangers stayed almost the same.
The same 2000 study recommended the Park Service hire 615 new rangers.
“That was several years ago, so obviously the need is there,” Parkinson said.
This month, the Park Service said it plans to strengthen barriers along the border in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, which rangers in Kendrick’s group voted the most dangerous in the system because drug traffickers and alien smugglers often cut through it.
Kristopher Eggle became the third ranger shot to death on the job since 1998 when he was ambushed at Organ Pipe in August while helping Border Patrol agents catch two men suspected by Mexican officials in a drug-related killing.
His mother, Bonnie Eggle, said during a recent visit to Washington that if Congress had answered earlier pleas for more rangers, better equipment and a stronger border, her son might still be alive.
“He didn’t deserve a bullet from an AK-47. He didn’t deserve a 6-foot grave,” Bonnie Eggle said. “But that’s what he got because he was not cared for enough by those who could have made a difference.”