Golden Gate National Recreation

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SCPD

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That's not necessarily true, depending on the scale of the interpretive operation. I'm an interp at the Tongass National Forest's Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center, which is staffed with up to 15 people on a busy day, and our radio system gets a workout. With interpreters scattered around the area at field locations up to a mile away from the main visitor center, the radio ends up as a primary management tool. We have no LEOs on-site (there's only one to cover the largest RD in the FS) so the field staff does everything.There's a lot of mundane traffic (requesting breaks, schedule changes, etc.)... and some not-so-mundane - bears on trails, parking lots, and staircases, visitor injuries, permit violations, etc.

Of course, it's all simplex with VX-900s and half the time you're around a hill and can't hear anything anyway. *headdesk*

Like I said in another thread, "there is the Forest Service and there is R10." In the 35 years I've listened to both Forest Service and National Park Service radio systems, including Grand Canyon, Sequoia-Kings and Yosemite National Parks I've heard very little traffic from interp. folks. I've been able to listen to Grand Canyon and Yosemite NP's on a daily basis from my homes in Flagstaff, AZ and Bridgeport, CA. I also listened to them while at work. I've camped in Death Valley more than any other park and listen to them the whole time I'm there. I spent a summer at Sequoia-Kings. That I've heard consists of, like you said, schedule changes and other program changes such as not needing two rangers for a interpretive walk because too few people showed up and other shifts needed to get through the day. It is good that folks up there pick up some other duties besides interpretation, it gives them a better feel for what the entire National Forest program consists of. There is nothing like cleaning restroom buildings for understanding outdoor recreation. At times it seems like more visitors talk to you while you are doing that than when you are performing other duties.

I retired from the Inyo National Forest and it ranks in the top five annually for recreation use in the FS system. It has four major visitor centers and one minor. The developed recreation sites, at least when I was working on the forest, had the most use of any National Forest in the system, more than twice that of the second ranking forest. The Mammoth District having a little more than half of the Inyo's developed recreation site use, so it ranked the Mammoth Ranger District higher than the second highest National Forest in developed recreation use. I was the frontcountry rec supervisor so I tried to keep that tiger by the tail with only limited success. The wilderness areas of the Inyo have the highest number of overnight visitors per acre of any wilderness areas in the Forest Service and most of the National Park Service as well.

Due to this heavy use we had an extensive interpretive program on the Inyo and the amount of radio traffic generated by the interp. staff was very small. Thank goodness for that as they had the worst radio protocol of anyone on the forest. In my travels and listening to National and State Parks, National Forests and BLM districts the situation is the same. Long messages, talking over other people, filling the air with low priority traffic during fire and law enforcement incidents and while aircraft are trying to update flight status. Sounds like interp folks up there get more practice and the situation must be better. On more than a few occasions in my career I had to be very abrupt on the air where I had to tell an interp. person to get off the air and stay off until I could talk with them in the Ranger Station later. That didn't really help their long term understanding of radio comms as it made them more nervous. However, when one of my employees is being threatened, radio traffic about the status of the wildflower bloom peak in different areas has no place.

EDIT Mammoth also had one of the two shuttle bus access only areas on federal land in the country at the time. There were two entrance stations involved with this operation and I supervised both. Incidents of visitors threatening my employees at them were frequent. While working at them from time to time I was spit at once and called a Chinese communist once. People just think they have the right to drive their vehicles whenever and wherever they want, and damn the results. The only other required shuttle bus area was at Denali.

This may seem off topic for this thread, however, the overwhelming majority of people haven't a clue about the workload and stress of heavily used public land. People tend to feel that since they are on vacation and are relaxing while traveling that everyone else there is doing the same. It doesn't always present itself on the radio, but these land management agencies are like the proverbial duck on the pond looking calm on the surface but the story is different under that surface. This is why I like to listen to land management agencies, that and I worked in the profession for so long. I would hope that people listening to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area radio system are not doing so just to understand the workings of another federal trunked system. GGNRA is the second most visited of the National Park Service's 397 units. In 2011 only the Blue Ridge Parkway ranked higher with its 15.4 million visits as compared with Golden Gate's 14.6 million. I should point out, however, that park units such as Golden Gate, Blue Ridge and the National Capital Region are not in large natural settings and can handle the numbers better than, for example, Grand Canyon and Yosemite, where the search and rescue workloads are high enough to burn people out enough to where they resign from the agency. Keeping in mind, however, that GGNRA has a unit of the U.S. Park Police to help manage its visitors.
 
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polarscribe

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Exsmokey said:
It is good that folks up there pick up some other duties besides interpretation, it gives them a better feel for what the entire National Forest program consists of.

Agreed. In a single week, I've patched up injuries, plunged toilets, hazed bears, written up special use permit violations, enforced wildlife protection closures... oh, and found time to interpret glaciology, climate change and plant succession, among other things. Hoping to get an FPO cert next year...

Exsmokey said:
Sounds like interp folks up there get more practice and the situation must be better.

Well, at least we have our own (simplex) channel apart from the rest of the forest net so we're not stepping on everyone else with bear sightings and lost cell phones :) The workleaders are good about teaching radio protocols.

Exsmokey said:
Incidents of visitors threatening my employees at them were frequent. While working at them from time to time I was spit at once and called a Chinese communist once.

Sounds familiar. The VC is a fee area (all of $3), and we regularly get irate residents who think that because they're "locals," the fee doesn't apply to them. "I'm not a tourist, I'm a local! I don't have to pay." "Uh, yes ma'am, you do." Also, God forbid you remind someone to keep their dog on a leash (36 CFR 261.16j)...

Maybe this should be a different thread somewhere, I guess, but... I grew up in the Bay Area and spent many, many a night under the stars in the Toiyabe and Inyo NFs. The Eastern Sierra is spectacular and sublime all at once. Thanks for doing your part to keep it a special place.
 
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polarscribe

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To bring this thread back on topic:

There was a question about law enforcement at RORI - Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front NHP. That park is in my hometown of Richmond, and a quick look at the staff listing suggests to me that they don't have any resource protection rangers. Given its geographical makeup - a number of small, scattered parcels in a heavily-urbanized city - my guess is that they've got a cooperative agreement with Richmond PD for routine law enforcement, maybe with support from the USPP.
 
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