December 7, 2018 • 36 mins
Park rangers do so much more than just keeping Yogi Bear from stealing picnic baskets. Whether it’s outsmarting poachers, fending off the Klan, protecting tourists from gator attacks or helping tiny endangered species make their way to sea, Will and Mango celebrate the heroes who keep our National parks running. Plus, why robbing a bank then hiding in the forest isn’t a great idea.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I guess what will? What's that mango? So I found
this thread from Reddit on some of the stupidest things
that park rangers have had to deal with every day,
and I just had to share some of these ridiculous stories.
So there are people who try to take selfies with bears. Yeah,
that's very stupid. There are people who try to take
home baby gators from the Everglades because they think they're
(00:22):
so cute, which is partially done because these things obviously
grow up, but also because baby gators apparently cry, and
that puts all the mama gators in the area in
attack mode. And uh, there's a family who thought that
bear spray, which is like a heavy duty pepper spray,
was supposed to be applied on their bodies like mosquito spray. Yeah.
Actually that takes the crown that pretty bad. Yeah, I
(00:45):
should have made for a rough day. But the saddest
and funniest thing to me is the complaints that they got.
So apparently one woman bawled out this park ranger because
the tree she traveled to visit looked exactly like the
trees in her backyard. I like that she was bawling
out of park range like I kind of don't think
that's the ranger's fault exactly. Yeah, it is an end
ridiculous Tourists are the least of what these heroic park
(01:07):
rangers have to deal with. Today. We're talking about how
they foiled poachers, save species, and yes, help plenty of
tourists along the way. Let's dive in. Y Hey their
(01:37):
podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson
and as always I'm joined by my good friend Mangesh
Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass,
decked out in a Smokey the Bear costplay man. This
is just going all out. That's our friend, producer Tristan McNeil.
He's even wearing this fuzzy brown sweater. I guess is
this is this because Smokey always refuses to wear a
(01:57):
shirt or what? Yeah, but dress like a bear is
a pretty sharp look, because Tristan really pulls it off,
and it really does. You know. I didn't have the
heart to tell him that Smokey is actually a symbol
of the National Forest Service, not the National Park Service. Well,
I think you have to be fair here because the
hat is part of the National Park Rangers uniform. Now,
speaking of hats, park rangers wear a bunch of different
(02:18):
hats figuratively speaking. And and that's because national parks, no
matter how safe they might feel to us, there's still
wild places and anything can happen there, and that means
park rangers have to be prepared to serve the public
in whatever way is needed, whether that's teachers, tour guides,
e m t s, search and rescue workers, even law
enforcement officers, and sadly even as coroners you know, sometimes
(02:41):
all in the same day. So, with all the rigors
of the rangers job in mind, we thought we'd show
a little appreciation by devoting an entire episode to them.
We'll talk about how park rangers got their start, how
the job has changed over the last hundred years, and
we'll also learn some of the tricks rangers used to
contend with whatever nature throws their way. And we're talking
things like grizzly bears and even these annoying tourists. So
(03:04):
where do you want to start, Mango, Well, believe it
or not, I actually want to stick with the hats
for a second, because the ranger hat we've been talking about,
which is I guess that flat hat with what's called
a lemon squeezer on top. It's actually a really interesting
holdover from the earliest days of the national parks. And
this is back when they were patrolled and protected by
military soldiers rather than park rangers, which isn't something most
(03:26):
people know, I imagine, so so Cluison on this how
did the military wind up in charge of the national parks?
So it was really out of necessity Essentially. President Grant
designated Yellowstone as the world's first official national park, and
this was way back in eighteen seventy two, but the
National Park Service wasn't established until about forty years later,
and in the meantime, there was no specialized government agency
(03:48):
task with overseeing national parks. Instead, that responsibility felt to
the Department of the Interior, where you know, there were
administrative duties that were passed from one pointee to the next,
but no one was particularly guild or even that interested
in managing Yellowstone properly, and as a result, poachers just
waked havoc on the parks, like they decimated the bison population,
(04:10):
the elk population, the deer population. And it wasn't just poachers,
like it was a total free for all timber companies
cut down forests there, vandals graffitied rock formations and the geysers,
and visiting ranchers even fed their herds there. And and
there was also this problem of former settlers who are
now illegally squatting in a national park. So rather than
leave quietly, these furious locals would set fires and destroy
(04:34):
hundreds of acres of parkland. And this all kept the
administrators scrambling to put it out. Like once word of
all this chaos reached Washington Congress, and the politicians were
just so mad that they refused to allocate any additional
funding for Yellowstone. And for a minute, it actually seemed
like the dream of a national park system might not
make it to the twentieth century. And so is this
(04:54):
s where the military steps in or one that's right?
So Congress basically reached a compromise with a Department of
the Interior, and it said that Yellowstone would only continue
to be funded as long as the day to day
management shifted to the military. So this is in eighteen
eighty six, which is fourteen years after Yellowstone's founding, But
a troop of sixty U. S. Cavalrymen came to stand
(05:15):
guard there over the parks two point two million acres.
And you know, if you think about a sixty people
covering two point two million acres of land, isn't a
lot of people. But this was still a major improvement
over the parks civilian run days when there were only
about ten people on patrol, and plus only about five
people were visiting Yellowstone each year in the eighteen eighties,
(05:36):
so small staff kind of worked well for the most part.
And it's more people started visiting. The military's presence increased too,
and by nine there were actually a total of four
sixty man troops in Yellowstone and the yearly park attendants
had grown to nineteen thousand people. Wow, alright, but I
don't want us to to to lose track of the hats.
We were talking about the hats earlier. So you're saying
(05:56):
these cavalrymen, they were the first to wear the flat
hats that we associate with park rangers. That's right, But
it wasn't just a fashion choice. So the hats actually
served a very practical purpose and it has a history
from this is when American cavalry had been sent to
fight in Cuba and the Philippines, and this is during
the Spanish American War, and while they were there, they
(06:17):
had to deal with intense tropical rains, you know, like
monsoons that would just soak them to the bone. And
the soldiers wore army issue hats that were pretty similar
to the modern ones worn by rangers, but according to
the regulations at the time, they were only supposed to
crease the hats in the front and back. But the
soldiers found that if they pinched it in quadrants, it
actually shed the rain water off better. So so that's
(06:39):
where you get what you call that that lemon squeezer pinch. Yeah,
that's right. So if you actually want to get technical,
that particular kind of hat pinch is known as the
Montana peak. Anyway, I definitely want to get technical, it's
called the Montana peaks. Well, veterans of the Spanish American
War brought their hats back and other soldiers realized it
was worth doing the squeeze and and by nineteen eleven,
(07:02):
the Montana peak was officially added to the troopers uniform.
And then a few years later, when civilian park rangers
took over, uh, the new recruits adopted that same fashion.
Well that's pretty cool. And I'm glad you directed us
to the military's early role in all of this, because
you know, not only did they set the bar for
the park ranger fashion, but they also pointed the way
forward in terms of the work that they did. You know,
(07:25):
for instance, pretty much from the moment troops arrived in Yellowstone,
they started waging war with the poachers there. And from
what I've read, this was no easy task, especially because
you know, the military didn't really have legal authority to
punish these poachers, or at least not in any significant way.
Right there weren't any national protections for wildlife at the time,
so soldiers basically had the authority to like confiscate gear,
(07:47):
or they could kick hunters out of the park, but
really there wasn't that much more they could do beyond that. Yeah,
and in most cases that wasn't enough to dissuade these
people from coming back with new supplies the next week.
So I asked Gabe to pull the numbers and and
a fresh bison scout could fetch you three hundred dollars
back in the eighteen nineties, and that was the equivalent
about eight grand today. So for poachers, a shot at
(08:10):
that kind of money was well worth the stern talking
two is that they might get from the military, And
of course the soldiers a Yellowstone felt a little deflated
about this, so they decided to get creative and sort
of stretch the limits of the legal penalties that they
could impose. Sometimes they'd lock poachers in the guardhouse for
a couple of weeks, or you know, they'd forced them
to scrub graffiti off the rocks. But probably the most
(08:31):
effective practice I had heard about was that soldiers would
march a group of poachers to the south entrance of
the park and then informed them that all of their
guns and supplies they were, you know, available for pick
up at the park headquarters, which was conveniently located about
seventy five miles away at the park's north inser. Well,
I mean, it serves them right, And of course park
rangers have upheld that zero tolerance stands on poaching ever since,
(08:55):
so this actually has nothing to do with poaching. But
I do have to mention it. Did you hear about
the park superintendent who kicked the KKK out of the park? No,
but I definitely want to hear the story. So so
what happened? Well, to start with, it. It helps me
know that the clan was super active in Colorado during
the mid nineteen twenties. And not only that, but the
group actually received like open acceptance from a number of
(09:16):
politicians like uh, I would say, the governor, the mayor
of Denver, even a U. S Senator named Rice Means.
And Senator Means held his pr event in Colorado's masa
Veryday National Park, and of course, like a bunch of
plansmen came out to support their boy. Some of them
even tried to convince the park superintendent, this guy Jesse
nuss Bombed to join up with them. So let me
(09:37):
guess he declined the offer, at least I hope he did. Yeah,
he did, And once the clan knew where he stood,
they started threatening to hold a torchlight parade through the
park like it was supposed to culminate with this giant
rally and uh burning crosses right in front of the
ruins of this famous Native American settlement. But nuts Bomb
wasn't having any of it, so he told a clan
(09:57):
they weren't welcome in masa Verday, and just a sure
he got his point across, he armed his small park
staff with these pick axe handles and other makeshift weapons,
and he positioned them where the klansmen could see them.
And for whatever reason, this intimidation tactic work because the
clan left without incident. Wow, that's pretty amazing that it
falls completely in line with the ranger motto, which is
(10:19):
to protect the park from people, the people from the park,
and the people from the people. Yeah, and well when'
us bond did definitely take two of those boxes, you know,
preserving natural spaces really takes a lot of nerve. I mean,
I feel like sometimes park rangers are almost viewed as
being on the softer side when it comes to law
enforcement officers, but their jobs are really really hard. Oh definitely,
(10:40):
And actually, I think you'll love this story I read
about from Glacier National Park and this happened in the
seventies when the park was apparently overrun with a bunch
of snowbob dealers who just kept illegally cutting through a
stretch of the park that runs along the Montana Highway.
This really ticked off one ranger in particular, a guy
named Art Sedlek, who he was just sick of issueing
these warnings over and over for the same stupid offense.
(11:03):
So one night in December, the rangers stopped yet another
group of snowmobilers and gave them the usual speech, you know,
to stay out of the area so they wouldn't get
a ticket. And it was less than an hour later
he heard the sound of snowmobiles and the distant on
so of course he hops on his four by four
to go investigate, and when he caught up with them,
he realized it was the same four offenders from earlier.
So of course the guy was really mad and just
(11:25):
about to lose it, And so he pulls up alongside
the lead vehicle and he starts trying to pull out
all of its spark plugs and couldn't get a good
enough group, and so he decided just like go all
action movie on him, and he used a slightly different approach.
So he pulls out his standard issue thirty eight caliber
pistol and fires it directly into the snowmobiles engine. That's insane, So,
(11:48):
I mean I could identify with that sort of anger though,
if that was happening over and over and over, you
know ues But uh, well, what happened to the other perpose?
Like did they just speed away? Well? What you think.
I mean, they pulled over and once they were in custody,
each trespasser was forced to pay a whopping twenty five
dollars in fines, So that was totally worth it. But uh,
(12:12):
what about the ranger, Like, I feel like that kind
of behavior either you get a promotion or you get
put in jail, like depending on who your boss is.
I guess it was actually neither of those. I mean,
he was reprimanded for firing the pistol, but he kind
of became a hero among the other officers, which you know,
I'm sure took away some of this thing from that,
but he had the locals on his side for sure,
(12:32):
and for years after the incident, the Montana Wilderness Association
gave out this said like award for displays of creativity
and defense of public lands. That's amazing. Well as exciting
as arms standoffs and high speed snowmobile chases are. We
we should probably talk a little bit about some of
the more low key but still super vital work that
park rangers do, especially when it comes to repopulating and
(12:55):
endangered species. Absolutely, before we do that, why don't we
take a quick break. They're listening to part time genius,
and we're talking about the highs and lows of being
an American park ranger. So I go, for as long
(13:17):
as there have been national parks, there have been poachers
looking to exploit the wildlife there. And you know, one
of the earliest species they targeted was, sadly, the American bison. Now,
a few centuries ago, tens of millions of bisons roamed
freely across the plains of North America, but by the
late eighteen eighties, excessive hunting and poaching had drastically reduced
those numbers. In fact, by nineteen o two, yellowstones, once
(13:40):
great herd, had decimated to just under two dozen animals.
I mean, that just feels absurd, especially when you consider
that Native Americans had hunted bison for centuries, but you know,
they didn't have guns and horses, so it made it
a bit of a fair fight. Also, Native Americans had
always showed such a deep respect for buffalo and they
were careful to use every part of the animals they killed,
(14:01):
and this wasn't the case for American poachers, who were
only interested in the body parts that commanded the highest
prices on the market. And you know, you just had
these enormous carcasses that were left to rot in the
fields for some poor park rangers to stumble upon. Right.
I feel like that's an aspect of this we don't
think about much like the people who find the horror
shows that the poachers leave in their wake. The fact
(14:23):
that it's usually people who have sworn to protect these
animals and the land that they live on it actually
makes it that much more tragic. Yeah, but thankfully, the
American bison story doesn't end in extinction, or at least
it hasn't yet, because once the park officials realized the
sorry state of Yellowstones bison population, they immediately set to
work on fixing the problem. And remember this was still
(14:44):
a decade or so before the actual National Park system
was formed. At the time, Yellowstone was still under the
jurisdiction of the U. S. Army, and it was actually
these soldiers who helped launch one of the world's first
attempts to preserve a wild species solely through protection and
also stewardship. I mean, that's pretty cool, But what did
they do exactly? Well, the first step was to try
(15:05):
and rebuild the bison's numbers. So to that end, Yellowstone
bought twenty one bison from private owners, and they gradually
started to mix them in with the free range population.
And when the NPS took over the operation, the rangers
kept up those husbandry methods while continue to crack down
on poachers. And now they also had the backing of
new laws for a nature species from Congress, and these
(15:27):
efforts ultimately proved super effective. By nineteen fifty four, the
bison's numbers that skyrocketed to about animals, and today Yellowstone
actually has about five thousand American bison, which makes it
both the largest and the oldest free roaming bison herd
in the whole country. Wow. So you know, so bison
are obviously on the larger end of the spectrum of
animals that the National Parks are helping to preserve. But
(15:48):
let's talk about a smaller animal that could still use
a lot of help, and that sea turtles. Because you know,
at this point, just about every species of sea turtle
on the planet is classified as endangered. We're talking all
all over the world. Adults sea turtles are hunted for
their eggs, or their skin, or their meat and shells.
I mean, all of this goes for big bucks on
the Black market, and things aren't any easier for their offspring.
(16:10):
I mean, they have to run the gauntlet of these
crabs and raccoons and seagulls just to get to the
water after hatching. And even if they do make it
to that like water like, the babies still have to
dodge like nets and pollution and predators like sharks. It's crazy. Well,
in fact, less than one percent of sea turtle eggs
wind up producing a turtle that survives to adulthood. Isn't
(16:31):
that crazy? Less than one percent? Yeah, I mean such
grim numbers. But what are the natural parks actually doing
to help these little guys? Well, anything they can really.
I mean, for instance, at the Canaveral National Seashore in Florida,
you've got specialists there who are helping the green turtle
population recover, and they do this by keeping local predators
from chowing down on the unhatched eggs. Beyond that, the
(16:52):
national parks work to keep the coastline as clean and
safe as possible for the sea turtles that are nesting there.
And I don't know if you noticed or not, but
most of the threats to see turtle survival we listed
come from humans, So being able to preserve a pristine
stretch of beach that's safe from developers and free of
artificial noise and light pollution. It goes a long way
towards getting baby sea turtles into the water. And actually
(17:15):
I've noticed, you know, several times when we go on
trips down to the shore, especially if it's in more
remote areas, you'll see these, you know, signs on the
you know, on the buildings that you stay in or
on the houses that you stay in that will remind
you to turn your outdoor lights off at night for
that very reason. Yeah, but I mean, even with those
protective measures, like those odds still seem really slim. And
(17:36):
you know, the rangers have to be a little despondent
about this, right, like like they're fighting this losing battle
to some degree, especially when I guess, like one hungry
shark or a careless fisherman could you know, destroy the
effort of the little hatchling that finally makes it to
the water. Well. And it's certainly stressful, but there's some
encouraging signs, so staff members that Canaveral counted fewer than
(17:57):
a hundred nest each year back in the mid to
late eighties, but since launching their program, those numbers have
risen sharply. In fact, two thousand fifteen was a banner
year for green sea turtles, with more than thirty five
hundred nests found along the shore there at Canaveral. But
at the same time, park rangers aren't blind to what
they're up against. I mean, they know they can't save
all or even most of these animals, but it never
(18:20):
stops them from doing what they can. For instance, I
read this account from a former park ranger. Her name
is Andrea Lankford, and she spent some time working at
Cape Hatteras at the National Seashore there in North Carolina,
and she routinely proud the beaches in search of sea
turtle nest and then documented the location so she could
check back in from time to time. One day, she
comes across this tiny baby loggerhead turtle in the dunes,
(18:42):
and the experience, which was early in her career, it
really made her reflect on whether or not her work
was truly worthwhile. So this is from an article in
backpacker dot Com, and Andrea writes this. She says, holding
this single turtle in my hands brought my decision about
being a park ranger into sharp focus. How could I
not fight to keep this endangered species from becoming extinct?
(19:04):
How could I not risk my life jumping from helicopters
or fording rivers so this baby turtle could someday return
and lay its own eggs, retirement benefits, health insurance, decent housing.
On my knees in the sand with a baby turtle
struggling for its life in the palm of my hand,
I thought I had found the best and most important
job in the world. Um, that's such a beautiful thought.
(19:26):
And you know that danger she mentions, like jumping out
of helicopters and fording rivers. It's a part of the
park rangers jobs that we don't even see often or
think about, but it's so present. In fact, I read
some statistics from the Department of Justice and apparently National
Park Rangers are more likely to be assaulted while on
the job than any other federal officer, and in terms
(19:48):
of fatal accidents involving plane crashes and natural disasters, park
rangers are up to twelve times more likely to die
in the line of duty than FBI agents. That is unbelievable. Well,
we really don't of them enough credit and and their
search and rescue work alone should have us singing their praises.
According to the NPS, park rangers came to the aid
of over forty five thousand people between two thousand four
(20:11):
and two thousand fourteen, and only about fifteen hundred of
those incidents resulted in fatalities. That's a pretty amazing track record, definitely.
And and since we're giving credit where it's due, I
I do want to make sure we're not overlooking one
of the most unique heroes to serve on the front
lines of our parks, and that's the bark Ranger, which
the Montana Glacier National Park added to its team in
(20:32):
two thousand sixteen. Wait, so are we letting dogs be
park rangers? Now bark rangers? And it's not just any
dog that This one is a border calling named Gracey,
and it's her job to help keep wildlife at a
safe distance from park visitors. So apparently there's this particular
parking lot where mountain goats and bighorn sheep like to gather,
and this led to all kinds of problems, like sometimes
(20:53):
the animals would lick the poisonous anti freeze that leaked
out of people's cars, and of course they're the tourists
who try to spook the animal or get too close
while trying to snap selfies. All right, but couldn't a
good old fashioned human ranger drive away the hers just
as easily as a dog. So that's why I was
wondering too, But apparently not. I mean, they tried this
for a while, but the animals always came right back
(21:13):
after being driven away by humans, and this is partially
because they were getting so many mixed signals. I mean,
you've got tourists trying to feed the animals and coax
them closer for better pictures, and and then you've got
these park rangers who are like simultaneously like shouting and
waving their arms to scare the animals off. And it
probably seemed almost like a game to the sheep and goats.
But Gracie has changed all of that. Like the herds
(21:35):
could tell when she barked, she met business, and now
she and her handler visit the parking lot to scare
off animals a couple of times a week, and it's
with the hopes that eventually the wild sheep and goats
will just deer clear the parking lot. Altogether. That's some
pretty good inner species teamwork there. That's that's that's pretty interesting. Well,
I want to steer us back to the human side
of things because there are a few more notable park
(21:55):
rangers I want to make sure we get to. But
before we do that, let's take a quick break. Okay, Well,
so before we run down the list of park Ranger
All Stars, I do want to just take a minute
(22:16):
to talk about some of the colorful lingo you might
hear in the national parks. So we've already mentioned flat
hats and lemon squeezers, which are actual nicknames that rangers
used to talk about their headgear. But have you ever
heard of code W? I can't say that I have.
Is is uh just guessing as W for water is
just like when a hiker gets dehydrated or something. So
I mean code water is a pretty good guest. But
(22:38):
the W actually stands for whimpy, And apparently code W
is just a playful put down that some park rangers
developed to describe these melodramatic tourists who call in for
a rescue when there's no actual emergency. That's rangers actually
waste a lot of time fielding calls about fake emergencies.
You know, it's mostly from hikers who just bit off
more than they could chew. I do feel for the
(23:01):
park rangers in these situations because, parsonally, because they have
to put up with so many silly requests and all
these weird questions that come from visitors. Actually read this
one anonymous account from a park ranger at the Grand Canyon,
and he listed out some of the ridiculous questions he's
had to feel out from adult tourists, like is the
Grand Canyon human made? And what time do you feed
the animals? And when do you turn on the waterfalls.
(23:23):
One time, this poor guy even caught a confused tourist
who had rolled his suitcase several miles into the Grand
Canyon because he thought his hotel was that there. Oh no, well,
I mean they also try to take measures to prevent
that sort of thing. I read about this effort called PRS,
which is uh, it's preventive search and rescue, and it's
basically a way to make sure our visitors are prepared
(23:45):
before they go out on hikes. You know, it's mainly
so rangers won't have to save them later on. But
the program trains rangers to look out for all these
telltale signs of novice hikers, like someone shows up in
flip flops or heading into the wilderness without a backpack.
You know, when they see someone like that at the
rangers make suggestions like wear shoes, or stock up on water,
or try a shorter trail. And you know they can't
(24:08):
force tourists to take this advice. But the program does
seem to be working. Since it was institute of the
Grand Canyon Park has actually seen this dramatic drop in
its search and rescue efforts. That's pretty cool. And speaking
of saving people from their own dumb choices, you remember
that ranger I mentioned that that that really sweet moment
with the turtles. Andrea Langford, I'll never forget her. Well,
(24:29):
she also worked a stretch at Yosemite, and there was
this one time she actually wound up foiling of bank heist.
I mean, this woman has done everything. Apparently these robbers
were just hiding out in the park after pulling a job,
but they got lost in the middle of the night
and they got so scared that they ended up calling
the police to come get them. That's amazing. So I
feel like I want to hear all of Langford's stories
(24:50):
because she sounds like a park legend. But perhaps the
ranger who has had the roughest govid all in the
line of duty is Roy Sullivan, who has to be
the most put upon ranger in history. So what makes
you say that? So during his tenure at TENDO, he
was actually struck by lightning seven different times. It's just crazy.
It's it's hard not to laugh at that. I know,
(25:10):
we shouldn't laugh at something, and the guy has been
struck by lightning seven times when we're laughing about it,
but that just is crazy. And I have heard of
this guy. I'm pretty sure he actually holds the Guinness
record for being struck by lightning more than anyone else.
At least I hope nobody has been struck more than that. Yeah,
I mean, I hope it's a record. No one's trying
to break. And if they did try, though, the odds
wouldn't be easy. So the odds being struck by lightning
(25:32):
are actually one and two eight million, but seven times
like according to a George Washington University staff professor, the
odds of that are actually four in uh. I don't
really know how to say his number, but it's one
with thirty two zeros after it, so it's a pretty
big number. Wow. And so did all seven of those
strikes happened while he was a park ranger, so not exactly.
(25:53):
The last one actually happened after his retirement, when Roy
was trout fishing at a lake near his house. Poor cock,
talk about bad luck, I know. So on the way
back to his car, a black bear actually stole the
fish he had hooked, but I think just survived this
like lightning attack and his seven lightning attack on top
of that, Roy was in no mood to be messed
(26:14):
with by a bear, so instead he just took a
stick and he hit the bear and stole his fish back,
and then he ran he high tailed it out of there,
kind of dazed but triumphant. Anyway. Um, Roy Sullivan's kind
of a legend and people call him the spark Ranger.
Oh that makes sense. All right. Well, we've talked a
lot today about the courage and the empathy that park
rangers bring to their preservation efforts. But there's one more
(26:37):
rather unique preservation campaign that I want to mention, and
that's the one headed up by ranger Doug Lean. So,
first of all, you've probably seen those classic travel posters
from you know, several of the national parks, and they're
those colorful silk screen posters that were used as promotional
tools and this was all the boost tourism back in
the nineteen thirties and forties. Yeah, I love this so much.
(26:57):
It's kind of that like art deco style you see
on this old Disneyland attraction posters, and it's got such
beautiful like light and shadows and muted colors. They're great. Yeah,
those are the ones, and the original posters were made
by the w p A or the Works Progress Administration,
and you know, if you remember, that was all part
of Roosevelt's wide scale effort to get America up and
running following the Depression. And to this end, a nice
(27:19):
chunk of the w p a's budget went to arts projects,
including these four thousand public murals and over two million
posters intended to promote art and education, health and travel.
And you know, on the travel side, a team of
Berkeley artists they were hired to produce more than fifty
poster designs and they were all under this banners see America.
And among these were a handful of designs representing the
(27:41):
fourteen national parks. So were these sold is like souvenirs
or just hung around town or what was the deal there? Well,
the silk screens used to make the posters were they
were pretty fragile, so only between fifty and a hundred
of these posters were made for each park, and of
course that's way too few to be sold to the
general public. So instead the posters were distributed to places
(28:02):
like you know, chambers of commerce or other local government buildings,
and and then they were put in these communities surrounding
each park. And so for a few years, the posters
did their jobs. They started getting new people, new visitors
into the parks and really helping America get back on
its feet. But then once their usefulness had kind of ended,
the posters started disappearing, and once they were gone, nobody
(28:23):
could find them, at least for several decades. That's crazy.
So now obviously you can buy prints and postcards of
all that old w p A art at the park,
so obviously it must have resurfaced at some point, right Well,
and that's where Ranger Doug comes in. This was back
in nineteen seventy one. He was working as a seasonal
ranger at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, and one
(28:43):
day in the fall, the rangers were doing a general
clean up of the park and this was after a
pretty busy summer season, so Doug was working on clearing
out an old horse stall when he came across this
tattered w P A poster for this park. Was the
very first design produced in the series. The poster would
have just ended up on the park burnpile if not
for Doug, and he really took a liking to it
(29:04):
and actually got permission to keep it for himself. But
this was just the start for him. He actually figured
that if Grand Titon Park had a poster like this,
maybe others did too. So over the next couple of decades,
Doug started piecing together this forgotten story of these now
iconic posters, and his biggest breakthrough came in nine So
(29:24):
that's the year Doug got in touch with the NPS
archives and Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, and he actually uncovered
thirteen black and white poster negatives. They've just been tucked
away in a file drawer for safe keeping, and using those,
Doug was able to reproduce the whole series and that's
why you can find all these postcards and Prince you
mentioned in the National park gift shops today. That's really incredible.
(29:46):
And I think you said though that the w p
A only made like posters for fourteen parks, but you know,
I've seen so many of those, and especially for parks
that didn't exist in the thirties. How's that come about? Well,
that's the other really cool thing about this. So one
Doug started reproducing the original posters, other parks began commissioning
new posters in that same style as the w p
(30:06):
A ones. So today they're over fifty national parks and
monuments represented in this collection, with more coming. And you know,
none of that would have ever happened if not for
Doug lem you know, the self proclaimed ranger of the
lost art. I love that, you know. We we actually
drove through Shando on the way back from Thanksgiving this
year and I was just so floored by the beauty there.
(30:27):
And every time I look at those little postcards that
we bought, which are just these tiny replicas of that art,
like it really makes me very happy. I completely agree.
And the parks really are incredible. I mean, not only
do they offer the chance to have these breathtaking or
kind of life affirming experiences in our nation's most precious places.
But they really offer that chance and equal measure to everybody. So,
(30:49):
to quote Dayton Duncan, a former director of the National
Park Foundation, quote, national parks are the declaration of independence
expressed on the landscape. We were the first nation in
the history of a kind to say that the most
special places should be set aside, not for royalty, not
for the rich, not for the well connected, but for
everyone and for all time. I mean, that sounds so
(31:10):
America to me. But before we make a bee line
for the closest park, let's salute a few more of
our favorite rangers in today's fact off h M. Did
you know that before he went to law school, Gerald
Ford briefly worked as a park ranger. Apparently he was
(31:32):
a seasonal ranger at Yellowstone, where he was assigned to
work as an armed guard on a bear feeding truck
and uh in years later he referred to it as
one of the greatest summers of his life. So, the
country's oldest park ranger is nineties six years old. Her
name is Betty Reid Saskin, and she works at the
Rosie the Riveter World War Two home Front National Historical
(31:53):
Park in California. Though she only got into her career
a little over a decade ago, she's also been a
tremendous activists from her civil rights work earlier to denouncing
the defunding of parks, and she's won a presidential medal
for her efforts. So while the least visited national parks
might be in Alaska or American Samoa within the contiguous US,
the least visit park is actually in the middle of
(32:14):
Lake Superior, and it's known as Isle Royal National Park.
The problem is mainly accessibility, so you can actually only
get there via seaplane or boat, and that actually shows
in the numbers the number of people who come there
over years, about sixteen thousand people, and that's equal to
the number of people that might visit Yosemite on a
single day in June. I've actually never heard of that park,
(32:36):
but now I kind of want to go visit this.
So did you know that for a while, Yellowstone was
actually referred to as Wonderland. Like we said in the
beginning of the show, only a few thousand visitors used
to go to Yellowstone every year at first, but when
the North Pacific Railroad was completed in eighteen eighty three,
suddenly the accessibility of the park changed, and so to
boost train travel, the railroad decided to launch this ad
(32:58):
campaign for Yellowstone kind building off the popularity of the
Alice in Wonderland books, so they talked about Yellowstone as Wonderland.
They even handed out pamphlets using Alice as a fictional
tour guide to the parks and pointing out places you
should visit. In fact, one of the quotes from the
brochure that I saw has her gushing and saying, tell me,
is this not Wonderland? So I'm going to tell you
(33:19):
about the bear Lunch Counter. So I guess Yellowstone used
to have an open air garbage dump at the park,
which we're definitely not the prettiest thing at the parks,
but it was an easy place to gin up a
wild animal show if you ever wanted to see scavenging animals,
and of course this meant big birds, but it also
included black bears and grizzlies, which is how the dump
got called the bear lunch Counter. But the weirdest part
(33:41):
of it is that in the ninety twenties and thirties,
The park operators decided to take advantage of this, and
they put leachers around the trash pits so visitors could
sit and watch. And they also put up signs that
said lunch counter for bears only, which you know, I'm
not sure why they had to clarify right day, right, Actually,
since we're on a Yellowstone tear, I'm gonna throw one
more here. So did you know that part of the
(34:02):
reason we've got Yellowstone is a national park is thanks
to an artist. His name is Thomas Moran, and in eightee,
Moran was part of a federally funded expedition to document
the area along with geologists, botanists, and zoologists. His sketches
and watercolors gave America its first view of Yellowstone. But
the real story is that his work was exhibited in
(34:22):
Congress later that year, and that's where the sheer beauty
of the depicted cliffs and geysers and rivers. This convinced
politicians to protect the land and turn it into what
they called a national playground. Oh I like that. Well,
I want to do another show later on, specifically on
the parks, because there's just so much wondering beauty there
but why don't you take home today's trophy. I mean,
it kind of sounds like you're just giving it to me,
(34:45):
like I didn't really earn it, but but I'll take
it either way. And listeners, I'm sure we forgot some
great facts about the National Parks. We would love to
hear those from it. You can always email us part
Time Genius at how Stuff Works dot com or call
us on our seven fact hot line. We always love
hearing messages. That's one eight four four pt Genius, or
you can hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. But
(35:05):
thanks so much for listening, yea, thanks again for listening.
Part Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works
and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do
(35:26):
the important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan
McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme
song and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland
does the exact producer thing. Gabeluesier is our lead researcher,
with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan
Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve. Jeff Cook gets the
show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like
what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if you
(35:48):
really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave
a good review for us. Do we do we forget Jason?
Jason who
I guess what will? What's that mango? So I found
this thread from Reddit on some of the stupidest things
that park rangers have had to deal with every day,
and I just had to share some of these ridiculous stories.
So there are people who try to take selfies with bears. Yeah,
that's very stupid. There are people who try to take
home baby gators from the Everglades because they think they're
(00:22):
so cute, which is partially done because these things obviously
grow up, but also because baby gators apparently cry, and
that puts all the mama gators in the area in
attack mode. And uh, there's a family who thought that
bear spray, which is like a heavy duty pepper spray,
was supposed to be applied on their bodies like mosquito spray. Yeah.
Actually that takes the crown that pretty bad. Yeah, I
(00:45):
should have made for a rough day. But the saddest
and funniest thing to me is the complaints that they got.
So apparently one woman bawled out this park ranger because
the tree she traveled to visit looked exactly like the
trees in her backyard. I like that she was bawling
out of park range like I kind of don't think
that's the ranger's fault exactly. Yeah, it is an end
ridiculous Tourists are the least of what these heroic park
(01:07):
rangers have to deal with. Today. We're talking about how
they foiled poachers, save species, and yes, help plenty of
tourists along the way. Let's dive in. Y Hey their
(01:37):
podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson
and as always I'm joined by my good friend Mangesh
Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass,
decked out in a Smokey the Bear costplay man. This
is just going all out. That's our friend, producer Tristan McNeil.
He's even wearing this fuzzy brown sweater. I guess is
this is this because Smokey always refuses to wear a
(01:57):
shirt or what? Yeah, but dress like a bear is
a pretty sharp look, because Tristan really pulls it off,
and it really does. You know. I didn't have the
heart to tell him that Smokey is actually a symbol
of the National Forest Service, not the National Park Service. Well,
I think you have to be fair here because the
hat is part of the National Park Rangers uniform. Now,
speaking of hats, park rangers wear a bunch of different
(02:18):
hats figuratively speaking. And and that's because national parks, no
matter how safe they might feel to us, there's still
wild places and anything can happen there, and that means
park rangers have to be prepared to serve the public
in whatever way is needed, whether that's teachers, tour guides,
e m t s, search and rescue workers, even law
enforcement officers, and sadly even as coroners you know, sometimes
(02:41):
all in the same day. So, with all the rigors
of the rangers job in mind, we thought we'd show
a little appreciation by devoting an entire episode to them.
We'll talk about how park rangers got their start, how
the job has changed over the last hundred years, and
we'll also learn some of the tricks rangers used to
contend with whatever nature throws their way. And we're talking
things like grizzly bears and even these annoying tourists. So
(03:04):
where do you want to start, Mango, Well, believe it
or not, I actually want to stick with the hats
for a second, because the ranger hat we've been talking about,
which is I guess that flat hat with what's called
a lemon squeezer on top. It's actually a really interesting
holdover from the earliest days of the national parks. And
this is back when they were patrolled and protected by
military soldiers rather than park rangers, which isn't something most
(03:26):
people know, I imagine, so so Cluison on this how
did the military wind up in charge of the national parks?
So it was really out of necessity Essentially. President Grant
designated Yellowstone as the world's first official national park, and
this was way back in eighteen seventy two, but the
National Park Service wasn't established until about forty years later,
and in the meantime, there was no specialized government agency
(03:48):
task with overseeing national parks. Instead, that responsibility felt to
the Department of the Interior, where you know, there were
administrative duties that were passed from one pointee to the next,
but no one was particularly guild or even that interested
in managing Yellowstone properly, and as a result, poachers just
waked havoc on the parks, like they decimated the bison population,
(04:10):
the elk population, the deer population. And it wasn't just poachers,
like it was a total free for all timber companies
cut down forests there, vandals graffitied rock formations and the geysers,
and visiting ranchers even fed their herds there. And and
there was also this problem of former settlers who are
now illegally squatting in a national park. So rather than
leave quietly, these furious locals would set fires and destroy
(04:34):
hundreds of acres of parkland. And this all kept the
administrators scrambling to put it out. Like once word of
all this chaos reached Washington Congress, and the politicians were
just so mad that they refused to allocate any additional
funding for Yellowstone. And for a minute, it actually seemed
like the dream of a national park system might not
make it to the twentieth century. And so is this
(04:54):
s where the military steps in or one that's right?
So Congress basically reached a compromise with a Department of
the Interior, and it said that Yellowstone would only continue
to be funded as long as the day to day
management shifted to the military. So this is in eighteen
eighty six, which is fourteen years after Yellowstone's founding, But
a troop of sixty U. S. Cavalrymen came to stand
(05:15):
guard there over the parks two point two million acres.
And you know, if you think about a sixty people
covering two point two million acres of land, isn't a
lot of people. But this was still a major improvement
over the parks civilian run days when there were only
about ten people on patrol, and plus only about five
people were visiting Yellowstone each year in the eighteen eighties,
(05:36):
so small staff kind of worked well for the most part.
And it's more people started visiting. The military's presence increased too,
and by nine there were actually a total of four
sixty man troops in Yellowstone and the yearly park attendants
had grown to nineteen thousand people. Wow, alright, but I
don't want us to to to lose track of the hats.
We were talking about the hats earlier. So you're saying
(05:56):
these cavalrymen, they were the first to wear the flat
hats that we associate with park rangers. That's right, But
it wasn't just a fashion choice. So the hats actually
served a very practical purpose and it has a history
from this is when American cavalry had been sent to
fight in Cuba and the Philippines, and this is during
the Spanish American War, and while they were there, they
(06:17):
had to deal with intense tropical rains, you know, like
monsoons that would just soak them to the bone. And
the soldiers wore army issue hats that were pretty similar
to the modern ones worn by rangers, but according to
the regulations at the time, they were only supposed to
crease the hats in the front and back. But the
soldiers found that if they pinched it in quadrants, it
actually shed the rain water off better. So so that's
(06:39):
where you get what you call that that lemon squeezer pinch. Yeah,
that's right. So if you actually want to get technical,
that particular kind of hat pinch is known as the
Montana peak. Anyway, I definitely want to get technical, it's
called the Montana peaks. Well, veterans of the Spanish American
War brought their hats back and other soldiers realized it
was worth doing the squeeze and and by nineteen eleven,
(07:02):
the Montana peak was officially added to the troopers uniform.
And then a few years later, when civilian park rangers
took over, uh, the new recruits adopted that same fashion.
Well that's pretty cool. And I'm glad you directed us
to the military's early role in all of this, because
you know, not only did they set the bar for
the park ranger fashion, but they also pointed the way
forward in terms of the work that they did. You know,
(07:25):
for instance, pretty much from the moment troops arrived in Yellowstone,
they started waging war with the poachers there. And from
what I've read, this was no easy task, especially because
you know, the military didn't really have legal authority to
punish these poachers, or at least not in any significant way.
Right there weren't any national protections for wildlife at the time,
so soldiers basically had the authority to like confiscate gear,
(07:47):
or they could kick hunters out of the park, but
really there wasn't that much more they could do beyond that. Yeah,
and in most cases that wasn't enough to dissuade these
people from coming back with new supplies the next week.
So I asked Gabe to pull the numbers and and
a fresh bison scout could fetch you three hundred dollars
back in the eighteen nineties, and that was the equivalent
about eight grand today. So for poachers, a shot at
(08:10):
that kind of money was well worth the stern talking
two is that they might get from the military, And
of course the soldiers a Yellowstone felt a little deflated
about this, so they decided to get creative and sort
of stretch the limits of the legal penalties that they
could impose. Sometimes they'd lock poachers in the guardhouse for
a couple of weeks, or you know, they'd forced them
to scrub graffiti off the rocks. But probably the most
(08:31):
effective practice I had heard about was that soldiers would
march a group of poachers to the south entrance of
the park and then informed them that all of their
guns and supplies they were, you know, available for pick
up at the park headquarters, which was conveniently located about
seventy five miles away at the park's north inser. Well,
I mean, it serves them right, And of course park
rangers have upheld that zero tolerance stands on poaching ever since,
(08:55):
so this actually has nothing to do with poaching. But
I do have to mention it. Did you hear about
the park superintendent who kicked the KKK out of the park? No,
but I definitely want to hear the story. So so
what happened? Well, to start with, it. It helps me
know that the clan was super active in Colorado during
the mid nineteen twenties. And not only that, but the
group actually received like open acceptance from a number of
(09:16):
politicians like uh, I would say, the governor, the mayor
of Denver, even a U. S Senator named Rice Means.
And Senator Means held his pr event in Colorado's masa
Veryday National Park, and of course, like a bunch of
plansmen came out to support their boy. Some of them
even tried to convince the park superintendent, this guy Jesse
nuss Bombed to join up with them. So let me
(09:37):
guess he declined the offer, at least I hope he did. Yeah,
he did, And once the clan knew where he stood,
they started threatening to hold a torchlight parade through the
park like it was supposed to culminate with this giant
rally and uh burning crosses right in front of the
ruins of this famous Native American settlement. But nuts Bomb
wasn't having any of it, so he told a clan
(09:57):
they weren't welcome in masa Verday, and just a sure
he got his point across, he armed his small park
staff with these pick axe handles and other makeshift weapons,
and he positioned them where the klansmen could see them.
And for whatever reason, this intimidation tactic work because the
clan left without incident. Wow, that's pretty amazing that it
falls completely in line with the ranger motto, which is
(10:19):
to protect the park from people, the people from the park,
and the people from the people. Yeah, and well when'
us bond did definitely take two of those boxes, you know,
preserving natural spaces really takes a lot of nerve. I mean,
I feel like sometimes park rangers are almost viewed as
being on the softer side when it comes to law
enforcement officers, but their jobs are really really hard. Oh definitely,
(10:40):
And actually, I think you'll love this story I read
about from Glacier National Park and this happened in the
seventies when the park was apparently overrun with a bunch
of snowbob dealers who just kept illegally cutting through a
stretch of the park that runs along the Montana Highway.
This really ticked off one ranger in particular, a guy
named Art Sedlek, who he was just sick of issueing
these warnings over and over for the same stupid offense.
(11:03):
So one night in December, the rangers stopped yet another
group of snowmobilers and gave them the usual speech, you know,
to stay out of the area so they wouldn't get
a ticket. And it was less than an hour later
he heard the sound of snowmobiles and the distant on
so of course he hops on his four by four
to go investigate, and when he caught up with them,
he realized it was the same four offenders from earlier.
So of course the guy was really mad and just
(11:25):
about to lose it, And so he pulls up alongside
the lead vehicle and he starts trying to pull out
all of its spark plugs and couldn't get a good
enough group, and so he decided just like go all
action movie on him, and he used a slightly different approach.
So he pulls out his standard issue thirty eight caliber
pistol and fires it directly into the snowmobiles engine. That's insane, So,
(11:48):
I mean I could identify with that sort of anger though,
if that was happening over and over and over, you
know ues But uh, well, what happened to the other perpose?
Like did they just speed away? Well? What you think.
I mean, they pulled over and once they were in custody,
each trespasser was forced to pay a whopping twenty five
dollars in fines, So that was totally worth it. But uh,
(12:12):
what about the ranger, Like, I feel like that kind
of behavior either you get a promotion or you get
put in jail, like depending on who your boss is.
I guess it was actually neither of those. I mean,
he was reprimanded for firing the pistol, but he kind
of became a hero among the other officers, which you know,
I'm sure took away some of this thing from that,
but he had the locals on his side for sure,
(12:32):
and for years after the incident, the Montana Wilderness Association
gave out this said like award for displays of creativity
and defense of public lands. That's amazing. Well as exciting
as arms standoffs and high speed snowmobile chases are. We
we should probably talk a little bit about some of
the more low key but still super vital work that
park rangers do, especially when it comes to repopulating and
(12:55):
endangered species. Absolutely, before we do that, why don't we
take a quick break. They're listening to part time genius,
and we're talking about the highs and lows of being
an American park ranger. So I go, for as long
(13:17):
as there have been national parks, there have been poachers
looking to exploit the wildlife there. And you know, one
of the earliest species they targeted was, sadly, the American bison. Now,
a few centuries ago, tens of millions of bisons roamed
freely across the plains of North America, but by the
late eighteen eighties, excessive hunting and poaching had drastically reduced
those numbers. In fact, by nineteen o two, yellowstones, once
(13:40):
great herd, had decimated to just under two dozen animals.
I mean, that just feels absurd, especially when you consider
that Native Americans had hunted bison for centuries, but you know,
they didn't have guns and horses, so it made it
a bit of a fair fight. Also, Native Americans had
always showed such a deep respect for buffalo and they
were careful to use every part of the animals they killed,
(14:01):
and this wasn't the case for American poachers, who were
only interested in the body parts that commanded the highest
prices on the market. And you know, you just had
these enormous carcasses that were left to rot in the
fields for some poor park rangers to stumble upon. Right.
I feel like that's an aspect of this we don't
think about much like the people who find the horror
shows that the poachers leave in their wake. The fact
(14:23):
that it's usually people who have sworn to protect these
animals and the land that they live on it actually
makes it that much more tragic. Yeah, but thankfully, the
American bison story doesn't end in extinction, or at least
it hasn't yet, because once the park officials realized the
sorry state of Yellowstones bison population, they immediately set to
work on fixing the problem. And remember this was still
(14:44):
a decade or so before the actual National Park system
was formed. At the time, Yellowstone was still under the
jurisdiction of the U. S. Army, and it was actually
these soldiers who helped launch one of the world's first
attempts to preserve a wild species solely through protection and
also stewardship. I mean, that's pretty cool, But what did
they do exactly? Well, the first step was to try
(15:05):
and rebuild the bison's numbers. So to that end, Yellowstone
bought twenty one bison from private owners, and they gradually
started to mix them in with the free range population.
And when the NPS took over the operation, the rangers
kept up those husbandry methods while continue to crack down
on poachers. And now they also had the backing of
new laws for a nature species from Congress, and these
(15:27):
efforts ultimately proved super effective. By nineteen fifty four, the
bison's numbers that skyrocketed to about animals, and today Yellowstone
actually has about five thousand American bison, which makes it
both the largest and the oldest free roaming bison herd
in the whole country. Wow. So you know, so bison
are obviously on the larger end of the spectrum of
animals that the National Parks are helping to preserve. But
(15:48):
let's talk about a smaller animal that could still use
a lot of help, and that sea turtles. Because you know,
at this point, just about every species of sea turtle
on the planet is classified as endangered. We're talking all
all over the world. Adults sea turtles are hunted for
their eggs, or their skin, or their meat and shells.
I mean, all of this goes for big bucks on
the Black market, and things aren't any easier for their offspring.
(16:10):
I mean, they have to run the gauntlet of these
crabs and raccoons and seagulls just to get to the
water after hatching. And even if they do make it
to that like water like, the babies still have to
dodge like nets and pollution and predators like sharks. It's crazy. Well,
in fact, less than one percent of sea turtle eggs
wind up producing a turtle that survives to adulthood. Isn't
(16:31):
that crazy? Less than one percent? Yeah, I mean such
grim numbers. But what are the natural parks actually doing
to help these little guys? Well, anything they can really.
I mean, for instance, at the Canaveral National Seashore in Florida,
you've got specialists there who are helping the green turtle
population recover, and they do this by keeping local predators
from chowing down on the unhatched eggs. Beyond that, the
(16:52):
national parks work to keep the coastline as clean and
safe as possible for the sea turtles that are nesting there.
And I don't know if you noticed or not, but
most of the threats to see turtle survival we listed
come from humans, So being able to preserve a pristine
stretch of beach that's safe from developers and free of
artificial noise and light pollution. It goes a long way
towards getting baby sea turtles into the water. And actually
(17:15):
I've noticed, you know, several times when we go on
trips down to the shore, especially if it's in more
remote areas, you'll see these, you know, signs on the
you know, on the buildings that you stay in or
on the houses that you stay in that will remind
you to turn your outdoor lights off at night for
that very reason. Yeah, but I mean, even with those
protective measures, like those odds still seem really slim. And
(17:36):
you know, the rangers have to be a little despondent
about this, right, like like they're fighting this losing battle
to some degree, especially when I guess, like one hungry
shark or a careless fisherman could you know, destroy the
effort of the little hatchling that finally makes it to
the water. Well. And it's certainly stressful, but there's some
encouraging signs, so staff members that Canaveral counted fewer than
(17:57):
a hundred nest each year back in the mid to
late eighties, but since launching their program, those numbers have
risen sharply. In fact, two thousand fifteen was a banner
year for green sea turtles, with more than thirty five
hundred nests found along the shore there at Canaveral. But
at the same time, park rangers aren't blind to what
they're up against. I mean, they know they can't save
all or even most of these animals, but it never
(18:20):
stops them from doing what they can. For instance, I
read this account from a former park ranger. Her name
is Andrea Lankford, and she spent some time working at
Cape Hatteras at the National Seashore there in North Carolina,
and she routinely proud the beaches in search of sea
turtle nest and then documented the location so she could
check back in from time to time. One day, she
comes across this tiny baby loggerhead turtle in the dunes,
(18:42):
and the experience, which was early in her career, it
really made her reflect on whether or not her work
was truly worthwhile. So this is from an article in
backpacker dot Com, and Andrea writes this. She says, holding
this single turtle in my hands brought my decision about
being a park ranger into sharp focus. How could I
not fight to keep this endangered species from becoming extinct?
(19:04):
How could I not risk my life jumping from helicopters
or fording rivers so this baby turtle could someday return
and lay its own eggs, retirement benefits, health insurance, decent housing.
On my knees in the sand with a baby turtle
struggling for its life in the palm of my hand,
I thought I had found the best and most important
job in the world. Um, that's such a beautiful thought.
(19:26):
And you know that danger she mentions, like jumping out
of helicopters and fording rivers. It's a part of the
park rangers jobs that we don't even see often or
think about, but it's so present. In fact, I read
some statistics from the Department of Justice and apparently National
Park Rangers are more likely to be assaulted while on
the job than any other federal officer, and in terms
(19:48):
of fatal accidents involving plane crashes and natural disasters, park
rangers are up to twelve times more likely to die
in the line of duty than FBI agents. That is unbelievable. Well,
we really don't of them enough credit and and their
search and rescue work alone should have us singing their praises.
According to the NPS, park rangers came to the aid
of over forty five thousand people between two thousand four
(20:11):
and two thousand fourteen, and only about fifteen hundred of
those incidents resulted in fatalities. That's a pretty amazing track record, definitely.
And and since we're giving credit where it's due, I
I do want to make sure we're not overlooking one
of the most unique heroes to serve on the front
lines of our parks, and that's the bark Ranger, which
the Montana Glacier National Park added to its team in
(20:32):
two thousand sixteen. Wait, so are we letting dogs be
park rangers? Now bark rangers? And it's not just any
dog that This one is a border calling named Gracey,
and it's her job to help keep wildlife at a
safe distance from park visitors. So apparently there's this particular
parking lot where mountain goats and bighorn sheep like to gather,
and this led to all kinds of problems, like sometimes
(20:53):
the animals would lick the poisonous anti freeze that leaked
out of people's cars, and of course they're the tourists
who try to spook the animal or get too close
while trying to snap selfies. All right, but couldn't a
good old fashioned human ranger drive away the hers just
as easily as a dog. So that's why I was
wondering too, But apparently not. I mean, they tried this
for a while, but the animals always came right back
(21:13):
after being driven away by humans, and this is partially
because they were getting so many mixed signals. I mean,
you've got tourists trying to feed the animals and coax
them closer for better pictures, and and then you've got
these park rangers who are like simultaneously like shouting and
waving their arms to scare the animals off. And it
probably seemed almost like a game to the sheep and goats.
But Gracie has changed all of that. Like the herds
(21:35):
could tell when she barked, she met business, and now
she and her handler visit the parking lot to scare
off animals a couple of times a week, and it's
with the hopes that eventually the wild sheep and goats
will just deer clear the parking lot. Altogether. That's some
pretty good inner species teamwork there. That's that's that's pretty interesting. Well,
I want to steer us back to the human side
of things because there are a few more notable park
(21:55):
rangers I want to make sure we get to. But
before we do that, let's take a quick break. Okay, Well,
so before we run down the list of park Ranger
All Stars, I do want to just take a minute
(22:16):
to talk about some of the colorful lingo you might
hear in the national parks. So we've already mentioned flat
hats and lemon squeezers, which are actual nicknames that rangers
used to talk about their headgear. But have you ever
heard of code W? I can't say that I have.
Is is uh just guessing as W for water is
just like when a hiker gets dehydrated or something. So
I mean code water is a pretty good guest. But
(22:38):
the W actually stands for whimpy, And apparently code W
is just a playful put down that some park rangers
developed to describe these melodramatic tourists who call in for
a rescue when there's no actual emergency. That's rangers actually
waste a lot of time fielding calls about fake emergencies.
You know, it's mostly from hikers who just bit off
more than they could chew. I do feel for the
(23:01):
park rangers in these situations because, parsonally, because they have
to put up with so many silly requests and all
these weird questions that come from visitors. Actually read this
one anonymous account from a park ranger at the Grand Canyon,
and he listed out some of the ridiculous questions he's
had to feel out from adult tourists, like is the
Grand Canyon human made? And what time do you feed
the animals? And when do you turn on the waterfalls.
(23:23):
One time, this poor guy even caught a confused tourist
who had rolled his suitcase several miles into the Grand
Canyon because he thought his hotel was that there. Oh no, well,
I mean they also try to take measures to prevent
that sort of thing. I read about this effort called PRS,
which is uh, it's preventive search and rescue, and it's
basically a way to make sure our visitors are prepared
(23:45):
before they go out on hikes. You know, it's mainly
so rangers won't have to save them later on. But
the program trains rangers to look out for all these
telltale signs of novice hikers, like someone shows up in
flip flops or heading into the wilderness without a backpack.
You know, when they see someone like that at the
rangers make suggestions like wear shoes, or stock up on water,
or try a shorter trail. And you know they can't
(24:08):
force tourists to take this advice. But the program does
seem to be working. Since it was institute of the
Grand Canyon Park has actually seen this dramatic drop in
its search and rescue efforts. That's pretty cool. And speaking
of saving people from their own dumb choices, you remember
that ranger I mentioned that that that really sweet moment
with the turtles. Andrea Langford, I'll never forget her. Well,
(24:29):
she also worked a stretch at Yosemite, and there was
this one time she actually wound up foiling of bank heist.
I mean, this woman has done everything. Apparently these robbers
were just hiding out in the park after pulling a job,
but they got lost in the middle of the night
and they got so scared that they ended up calling
the police to come get them. That's amazing. So I
feel like I want to hear all of Langford's stories
(24:50):
because she sounds like a park legend. But perhaps the
ranger who has had the roughest govid all in the
line of duty is Roy Sullivan, who has to be
the most put upon ranger in history. So what makes
you say that? So during his tenure at TENDO, he
was actually struck by lightning seven different times. It's just crazy.
It's it's hard not to laugh at that. I know,
(25:10):
we shouldn't laugh at something, and the guy has been
struck by lightning seven times when we're laughing about it,
but that just is crazy. And I have heard of
this guy. I'm pretty sure he actually holds the Guinness
record for being struck by lightning more than anyone else.
At least I hope nobody has been struck more than that. Yeah,
I mean, I hope it's a record. No one's trying
to break. And if they did try, though, the odds
wouldn't be easy. So the odds being struck by lightning
(25:32):
are actually one and two eight million, but seven times
like according to a George Washington University staff professor, the
odds of that are actually four in uh. I don't
really know how to say his number, but it's one
with thirty two zeros after it, so it's a pretty
big number. Wow. And so did all seven of those
strikes happened while he was a park ranger, so not exactly.
(25:53):
The last one actually happened after his retirement, when Roy
was trout fishing at a lake near his house. Poor cock,
talk about bad luck, I know. So on the way
back to his car, a black bear actually stole the
fish he had hooked, but I think just survived this
like lightning attack and his seven lightning attack on top
of that, Roy was in no mood to be messed
(26:14):
with by a bear, so instead he just took a
stick and he hit the bear and stole his fish back,
and then he ran he high tailed it out of there,
kind of dazed but triumphant. Anyway. Um, Roy Sullivan's kind
of a legend and people call him the spark Ranger.
Oh that makes sense. All right. Well, we've talked a
lot today about the courage and the empathy that park
rangers bring to their preservation efforts. But there's one more
(26:37):
rather unique preservation campaign that I want to mention, and
that's the one headed up by ranger Doug Lean. So,
first of all, you've probably seen those classic travel posters
from you know, several of the national parks, and they're
those colorful silk screen posters that were used as promotional
tools and this was all the boost tourism back in
the nineteen thirties and forties. Yeah, I love this so much.
(26:57):
It's kind of that like art deco style you see
on this old Disneyland attraction posters, and it's got such
beautiful like light and shadows and muted colors. They're great. Yeah,
those are the ones, and the original posters were made
by the w p A or the Works Progress Administration,
and you know, if you remember, that was all part
of Roosevelt's wide scale effort to get America up and
running following the Depression. And to this end, a nice
(27:19):
chunk of the w p a's budget went to arts projects,
including these four thousand public murals and over two million
posters intended to promote art and education, health and travel.
And you know, on the travel side, a team of
Berkeley artists they were hired to produce more than fifty
poster designs and they were all under this banners see America.
And among these were a handful of designs representing the
(27:41):
fourteen national parks. So were these sold is like souvenirs
or just hung around town or what was the deal there? Well,
the silk screens used to make the posters were they
were pretty fragile, so only between fifty and a hundred
of these posters were made for each park, and of
course that's way too few to be sold to the
general public. So instead the posters were distributed to places
(28:02):
like you know, chambers of commerce or other local government buildings,
and and then they were put in these communities surrounding
each park. And so for a few years, the posters
did their jobs. They started getting new people, new visitors
into the parks and really helping America get back on
its feet. But then once their usefulness had kind of ended,
the posters started disappearing, and once they were gone, nobody
(28:23):
could find them, at least for several decades. That's crazy.
So now obviously you can buy prints and postcards of
all that old w p A art at the park,
so obviously it must have resurfaced at some point, right Well,
and that's where Ranger Doug comes in. This was back
in nineteen seventy one. He was working as a seasonal
ranger at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, and one
(28:43):
day in the fall, the rangers were doing a general
clean up of the park and this was after a
pretty busy summer season, so Doug was working on clearing
out an old horse stall when he came across this
tattered w P A poster for this park. Was the
very first design produced in the series. The poster would
have just ended up on the park burnpile if not
for Doug, and he really took a liking to it
(29:04):
and actually got permission to keep it for himself. But
this was just the start for him. He actually figured
that if Grand Titon Park had a poster like this,
maybe others did too. So over the next couple of decades,
Doug started piecing together this forgotten story of these now
iconic posters, and his biggest breakthrough came in nine So
(29:24):
that's the year Doug got in touch with the NPS
archives and Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, and he actually uncovered
thirteen black and white poster negatives. They've just been tucked
away in a file drawer for safe keeping, and using those,
Doug was able to reproduce the whole series and that's
why you can find all these postcards and Prince you
mentioned in the National park gift shops today. That's really incredible.
(29:46):
And I think you said though that the w p
A only made like posters for fourteen parks, but you know,
I've seen so many of those, and especially for parks
that didn't exist in the thirties. How's that come about? Well,
that's the other really cool thing about this. So one
Doug started reproducing the original posters, other parks began commissioning
new posters in that same style as the w p
(30:06):
A ones. So today they're over fifty national parks and
monuments represented in this collection, with more coming. And you know,
none of that would have ever happened if not for
Doug lem you know, the self proclaimed ranger of the
lost art. I love that, you know. We we actually
drove through Shando on the way back from Thanksgiving this
year and I was just so floored by the beauty there.
(30:27):
And every time I look at those little postcards that
we bought, which are just these tiny replicas of that art,
like it really makes me very happy. I completely agree.
And the parks really are incredible. I mean, not only
do they offer the chance to have these breathtaking or
kind of life affirming experiences in our nation's most precious places.
But they really offer that chance and equal measure to everybody. So,
(30:49):
to quote Dayton Duncan, a former director of the National
Park Foundation, quote, national parks are the declaration of independence
expressed on the landscape. We were the first nation in
the history of a kind to say that the most
special places should be set aside, not for royalty, not
for the rich, not for the well connected, but for
everyone and for all time. I mean, that sounds so
(31:10):
America to me. But before we make a bee line
for the closest park, let's salute a few more of
our favorite rangers in today's fact off h M. Did
you know that before he went to law school, Gerald
Ford briefly worked as a park ranger. Apparently he was
(31:32):
a seasonal ranger at Yellowstone, where he was assigned to
work as an armed guard on a bear feeding truck
and uh in years later he referred to it as
one of the greatest summers of his life. So, the
country's oldest park ranger is nineties six years old. Her
name is Betty Reid Saskin, and she works at the
Rosie the Riveter World War Two home Front National Historical
(31:53):
Park in California. Though she only got into her career
a little over a decade ago, she's also been a
tremendous activists from her civil rights work earlier to denouncing
the defunding of parks, and she's won a presidential medal
for her efforts. So while the least visited national parks
might be in Alaska or American Samoa within the contiguous US,
the least visit park is actually in the middle of
(32:14):
Lake Superior, and it's known as Isle Royal National Park.
The problem is mainly accessibility, so you can actually only
get there via seaplane or boat, and that actually shows
in the numbers the number of people who come there
over years, about sixteen thousand people, and that's equal to
the number of people that might visit Yosemite on a
single day in June. I've actually never heard of that park,
(32:36):
but now I kind of want to go visit this.
So did you know that for a while, Yellowstone was
actually referred to as Wonderland. Like we said in the
beginning of the show, only a few thousand visitors used
to go to Yellowstone every year at first, but when
the North Pacific Railroad was completed in eighteen eighty three,
suddenly the accessibility of the park changed, and so to
boost train travel, the railroad decided to launch this ad
(32:58):
campaign for Yellowstone kind building off the popularity of the
Alice in Wonderland books, so they talked about Yellowstone as Wonderland.
They even handed out pamphlets using Alice as a fictional
tour guide to the parks and pointing out places you
should visit. In fact, one of the quotes from the
brochure that I saw has her gushing and saying, tell me,
is this not Wonderland? So I'm going to tell you
(33:19):
about the bear Lunch Counter. So I guess Yellowstone used
to have an open air garbage dump at the park,
which we're definitely not the prettiest thing at the parks,
but it was an easy place to gin up a
wild animal show if you ever wanted to see scavenging animals,
and of course this meant big birds, but it also
included black bears and grizzlies, which is how the dump
got called the bear lunch Counter. But the weirdest part
(33:41):
of it is that in the ninety twenties and thirties,
The park operators decided to take advantage of this, and
they put leachers around the trash pits so visitors could
sit and watch. And they also put up signs that
said lunch counter for bears only, which you know, I'm
not sure why they had to clarify right day, right, Actually,
since we're on a Yellowstone tear, I'm gonna throw one
more here. So did you know that part of the
(34:02):
reason we've got Yellowstone is a national park is thanks
to an artist. His name is Thomas Moran, and in eightee,
Moran was part of a federally funded expedition to document
the area along with geologists, botanists, and zoologists. His sketches
and watercolors gave America its first view of Yellowstone. But
the real story is that his work was exhibited in
(34:22):
Congress later that year, and that's where the sheer beauty
of the depicted cliffs and geysers and rivers. This convinced
politicians to protect the land and turn it into what
they called a national playground. Oh I like that. Well,
I want to do another show later on, specifically on
the parks, because there's just so much wondering beauty there
but why don't you take home today's trophy. I mean,
it kind of sounds like you're just giving it to me,
(34:45):
like I didn't really earn it, but but I'll take
it either way. And listeners, I'm sure we forgot some
great facts about the National Parks. We would love to
hear those from it. You can always email us part
Time Genius at how Stuff Works dot com or call
us on our seven fact hot line. We always love
hearing messages. That's one eight four four pt Genius, or
you can hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. But
(35:05):
thanks so much for listening, yea, thanks again for listening.
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