December 3, 2024 • 26 mins
"Signs don't do much. It's the educational programs where you're actually talking to people that are the most effective in changing behaviors."
Notable Moments
00:42 Prescott's volunteer-driven, unique park ranger system.
03:26 Code enforcement change to interpretation.
07:07 Leave No Trace signs to improve local campsites.
11:48 Enhance accessibility and safety to attract families.
15:38 Launching a Junior Ranger program
18:06 Nature Ninos partner is developing a local STEM activity center.
20:53 ADA trails improve park accessibility.
Sean Underhill is a park ranger from Prescott, Arizona helping get city-level park programs up and running. He shares insights into their extensive volunteer efforts and a new ranger program that is building a bridge between parks and local communities. The implementation of a city level Junior Ranger program is one great example of the innovative initiatives they are working on.
Read the blog for more of the takeaways from my conversation with Sean.
Resources
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome to the park leader show where we are changing the landscape of
leadership in parks and conservation. I'm your host Jody
Mayberry. And joining me for this episode is Sean
Underhill, a park ranger with the city of Prescott, Arizona.
And Prescott is doing some really neat things that
I just thought we needed to talk about, and Sean is just the person to
(00:24):
talk about it with. So welcome to the show, Sean. Thank you, Jody.
It's a pleasure to be on your show after listening it for
for so long. It's nice to be able to give back and
share some of the thoughts and what we're doing here and how others can do
the same. Well, that's I love that because that's what we
do this show for is to connect to the park
(00:46):
ranger community and park professionals all over the country.
And we focus on not national parks, but state
parks, county parks, city parks. So it's it's good to find out
what other people are doing. And as someone who's listened to the show for a
while, hopefully, you've heard that, and you've gotten ideas from other
places and other agencies. And it's great to have a chance to talk to
(01:09):
you. And you're the 1st park ranger from the city of Prescott to
be on the show. Yes. I've noticed that. And Prescott
has a unique set, for its
park ranger system and that it's all volunteer
except really one position, which is
my friend Ellen Bashore, and she's working half
(01:31):
paid by the city, half by the school district to do an
outdoor learning center, working at our community nature center
to provide outdoor programming for the school children within our school
district. And an extension of that has been our
Nature Ninos program and others that
it's been great for the community, but it's not like
(01:53):
a normal even a normal city, park ranger system
where you have those enforcing codes and laws. We
originally started I think it was 2011. The City of
Prescott had volunteer park rangers. It was set up by our Northern
Arizona University to do code enforcement.
And, you know, that's great and, you know, doing parking
(02:15):
violations. But when you're working with volunteers and you're asking them to
go to court, you're not always gonna get people eager or able to
do that. And if you're not paying them, it's hard to do. And
so we saw it, with Ellen, she's, you know, has
a master's in education, saw a way to bring
that outdoor learning to students. And as
(02:37):
she's progressed, she's increased her, I guess, for lack
of a better name, manpower by getting AmeriCorps
volunteers. And there's a great Arizona serve organization
that coordinates AmeriCorps volunteers to
work at the Nature Center as park rangers. And usually these are college
kids working with our Prescott College, which gives them
(02:58):
experience. They can put on their resume. Yeah. I did park ranger work.
And as they progress and go to other park ranger positions,
it helps them out. And it also helps the city out in
that you're getting volunteers, but you're also getting, you know, paid eager
people to do the work and reach out to the children. So it's
become less of code enforcement and law enforcement to
(03:21):
more interpretive ranger work, and it's having a big
impact on our city. Well, this is this is fascinating in a couple
of ways. One is what Sean told us about the change from code
enforcement to interpretation and the impact it's had. That is definitely
one conversation. Another is the city
having mostly or almost
(03:43):
exclusively volunteer park rangers. I don't think
that is common, so there's another conversation. But before we get to
either of those or the topics I specifically thought, oh, I've got to
have Sean on to talk about, I have to address one thing and that is
so a behind the scenes look at the Park Leader Show is before I interview
anybody, I always say, can you pronounce your first and last name for me? As
(04:05):
I did with Sean before we started recording. What I did not do is
say, can you pronounce the name of your town for me? And I've been saying
Prescott, and clearly, you've heard Sean say Prescott. So I've been
saying it wrong all this time. Well, it's a classic
way of knowing who lives here and who's visiting.
And there's arguments throughout Prescott's
(04:27):
history on how to pronounce the name, and you'll see it
both ways. But if you're a native or you've lived here for a
while, it's pronounced Prescott. Yeah. That's good. I now
I've heard it both ways. That reminds me of the show Psych. Have you ever
seen the show Psych? Yes. Great show, and there
is a line in there where, well, a running joke where he would say, I've
(04:49):
heard it both ways, like, if he pronounced a a word wrong. And then
eventually, one time, he said, I've heard it both ways, the right way and
then your way, which I I thought that was funny. Alright,
Sean. Tell us a little bit about your history with the outdoors
and then how you came to be a park ranger with the city
of Prescott. You see how quickly I adapted. Yes.
(05:11):
Well, going back to my history is and talking about
the right way or the wrong way, I've heard there's the right way, the wrong
way and the army way. It's like I have a background in the army. I
was military police or even as civilian
police for the military for the longest time,
got moved up the ranks to an assistant chief. I was even an
(05:33):
acting chief for a while back in my hometown of Yuma at the
Yuma Proving Ground. And now as I grew up there in the
desert, I always admired park rangers and park ranger
work. But if I wanted to get into that there, it'd be working with the
Bureau of Land Management and just driving around the desert all day.
And I wasn't you know, I did that as law enforcement, but it wasn't
(05:55):
something I sought out to do. And my wife, she
was a public defender, got an opportunity to move up to
Prescott, where it's a lot cooler than the desert. We
have pine forests and a
few different environmental areas, a few lakes.
It's lots of hiking opportunities. It's a great
(06:16):
area. So we moved up here. I became a stay at home
dad for about 5 years. And first thing I did
was print out the list of all the parks in the area. And I took
my kids to every park and we evaluated. We ranked these parks on
which one's the best for which features, what time of year to go to these
different parks. And, you know, moving up here, I thought, oh, we're
(06:38):
surrounded by the Prescott National Forest. There'll be
ranger programs. You know, I'm thinking just like you have with
the, you know, the National Park Service, I can take my kids to
those. And unfortunately, they're so thin staffed
here with the national forest is that those programs
don't exist really. And so, you know, that was a little disappointing. There was
(07:00):
no free outdoor programs. And after living here a
while, you know, I take my kids out to the forest all the time just
to play. And once I had the
opportunity, I used my GI bill and I had to go and I'm like,
what do I get my master's in? Something where I can still care for my
kids but do part time schoolwork. So I
(07:21):
looked at Parks and Recreation Management. It was a good one, a good field to
get into different from law enforcement, but still getting out
there in the woods, helping people out. And I had to
pick a program for my master's degree.
I looked at Leave No Trace, and
I noticed that our neighboring national forest was a gold
(07:43):
standard site. So I reached out to our forest because I take my
kids to these dispersed campsites. And as they play in the
dirt, there's broken glass, stuff burned in the burn pits
that's not supposed to be there and, you know, damage to the trees.
I'm like, how can I fix this? So I was thinking putting
Leave No Trace signs at all the campsites. But as I got more into the
(08:05):
program, after my 1st year, I did, you know, a year's worth of
research on Leave No Trace. Signs don't do
much. A lot of the signs end up being shot up. And but
educational programs where you're actually talking to people, they're the
most effective in changing behaviors. So along
with, you know, research leaning that way, after my
(08:28):
1st year of the program, it's only a 2 year program, was looking into
internships. You know, could I volunteer with the forest service? But
then, you know, looking on the AmeriCorps, the Arizona SERVE
website, I noticed there was a park ranger position at our
community nature center. And I had actually gone there with the program for
my daughter, and I met Ellen Bashore and her other rangers
(08:50):
there, and they were doing great work for the city. And I'm like, I didn't
even know the city had park rangers. So I volunteered with
them, and Ellen was doing research into a
junior ranger program, but just gathering materials. And I'm like, I wanna take
this on. And so I started you know, I took
all that research, you know, all that time I spent going to all those different
(09:11):
parks, all that research on leave no trace. I'm like, I can design a
park a junior ranger program around leave no trace
with Arizona specific appreciate AZ version of it
and get all that information from the parks into a junior ranger
book. So the junior ranger book I created, if you just search Prescott
Junior Rangers, you can download it for free. It's bilingual,
(09:33):
and it has a map of the city, but so it
highlights all of those parks, open space. And
I also did a lot of research into the history of the city. So it
has a timeline game of the entire history
from a 1000000 years ago. There's a dormant, well,
extinct volcano in the center of town, between
(09:55):
here and Prescott Valley. And it was just a way to give
back to the community, highlight these issues, and add on
to the programs that the rangers who were there were already
doing with Nature Ninos. They started that up. I got into
it about a year into the program and now it's on its 4th
year and we've just been continuing to expand it because it
(10:17):
targets ages 0 to 8. And
really, you think it's for the kids, but it's also for the parents to
get them information, to let them know that even with an infant, you can
safely take kids outdoors and just introduce them to
other organizations that serve families. So we've
LN partnered with Community Health Services and
(10:39):
which I also work for now. And
you have our University of Arizona Cooperative Extension for
Yavapaya County. And they were the original
startup for Nature Ninos. And now it has a bunch of different
other organizations that serve families and they participate,
they come out, they do different booths, they provide, you know,
(11:02):
scavenger hunts, arts and crafts, all nature based
and encouraging parents to get outdoors. And the key is we
make it free. We do a different park each month,
just 2 hours on a Saturday, and it gets people
outdoors to parks they may not have gone to before. A lot of
them are like, I've never been to this park. I didn't know it had these
(11:23):
features. We highlight if it has ADA features.
And, you know, also while I was designing the Junior Ranger book,
I worked with the National League of Cities, Cities
Connecting Children to Nature, to do an equity study of all of our
parks using GIS mapping. And so as we would go to all these
different parks, we highlighted that, hey, with a
(11:45):
simple ramp, this bathroom would be more accessible. Or if we
put a path here, it would be more accessible, not just to a
wheelchair person, but strollers that families are using or, you
know, add lighting to make it safer. We make sure that
wherever we do a Nature Ninos event, that the trails are safe for
children so that they don't trip, hurt themselves. We
(12:08):
make sure there's no trash around and glass that could hurt
them. So that's a safe environment and parents feel
safe coming out there, introducing their families to nature
because on their own, it's like if I have an infant, I don't want to
go out into the woods. But if I'm with a group of others and
professionals who are trained in education and
(12:30):
safety, they're more willing. And we get a lot of repeat
people, but we also get a lot of new people every year, every month.
So it averages about 150 people at an event.
Sometimes we've had over 300, but we try to keep it around 150.
So, you know, that much people in one location
isn't always good for a park area. So I volunteered as
(12:52):
AmeriCorps for 1 year. Once I got my master's, I
moved on to work for county health. I continued as a volunteer for the
park rangers to help manage the junior ranger program. And
I also got on with the Leave No Trace organization as the
state advocate for Arizona to be able to
reach out further within the state, let others know about these
(13:14):
programs, and also gives me resources for these
events to provide Leave No Trace handouts, but also,
to help others around the state So they can contact me and I can
send them booth kits for Leave No Trace. Let them just continue
to spread the message and, see where we can continue
to provide these free activities for families that they really
(13:37):
need. When you created the Junior Ranger program,
the part that I'm interested in is the idea of creating
it for a city as opposed to
a park that where it's focused just on one park and maybe
it's a big park with a lot of property and so it's easy to
create a program there. What is the key to
(14:00):
a successful city level junior ranger program as opposed
to one for a larger park? Yeah. That's one thing
that I didn't touch on is what makes this program unique
is that well, not unique. Other programs have passports.
Our state parks have a passport to each state park, but you have to go
all around the whole state. For ours, I made a passport on
(14:23):
it for organizations within the city, our
museums, our, you know, libraries,
just places that are family friendly. So that
as a family, a parent takes this Junior
Ranger book, they'll open it up, they'll see the passport,
and there's about 20 different organizations on there.
(14:46):
They only have to visit 7 of them. 1, to
lead into their 7 Leave No Trace principles. But also
if somebody is just visiting on a weekend, yeah, I can do 7 of
these. A lot of them are in their downtown area. Now there's some
specialty toy shops that do some local businesses.
We have a few different museums, our Museum of
(15:10):
Indigenous People, our Charlotte Hall Museum highlights the
territorial history of the area. And we
even have a planetarium. So we just have people
go to these different organizations. They get a stamp and then
they can return to our downtown visitor center or recreation
services and they get a junior
(15:32):
ranger badge. It's a wooden badge, you
know, sustainably sourced wood. And it's
something that people can feel they can earn, accomplish.
They can be done in a weekend or over summer.
When I initially came out with it, I had it
distributed through our library summer reading program. I worked with our
(15:54):
tourism office to get Appreciate AZ
funds to print the initial 1,000 booklets and
buy the badges. And really
that's anybody can do that. You just need somebody
willing, you know, with some graphic design skills. I use the
Canva program. It's pretty common with a lot of organizations,
(16:16):
but any program you can design it in and you just look
at, you know, I looked at other city and, you
know, state, federal junior ranger programs. We collected all the
information we wanted and made it specific to our
area. And that's why a lot of people like it because it
is specific to this city. And you get
(16:39):
those that historical aspect, that his
cultural, the ecology of the area, learning about the specific
animals and plants that are within the city that you'll see in your
backyard. And it also, you know, with that,
makes people more aware, makes those living here more
aware of what's around them. And as visitors come here,
(17:01):
they appreciate Prescott more because they have a quick
resource to learn about it. How many
families that do the junior ranger program say
Prescott and how many say Prescott? Or another way to ask it, how
many families that do the junior ranger program are from out
of the area and how many are from in the area?
(17:24):
Well, that's one thing that is difficult to
say because, you know, we print those 1,000 books, and within a year, they
were gone. We also do a annual Earth Day festival
where we give them out. And the thing with
making them free to download online is it's hard to tell
who's getting these books. I remember talking to our library,
(17:47):
one of our librarians, and she said there was a
lady who was having trouble printing something. And when she asked her what she was
printing, she's like, oh, the Junior Ranger book. And she said,
fortunately, she had copies that I had given her. So she's like, here, you can
have a copy. And and she was from a city that was, you
know, 50 miles away. They were just visiting and they wanted to
(18:08):
go through the program. We get a lot from our Phoenix area,
which is, you know, a 100 miles away. They come up to get Escape the
Heat and, you know, go through this program. Hard to get
statistics on that, but we have say roughly 2,000
who have gone through the book so far and we have plenty of
badges available. I even had some printed in Spanish if anybody wanted
(18:31):
those versions, but I made sure to get
it translated into Spanish as that was the most common
secondary language in the area. And, you know, if I have time, we'll
continue to do more, but I've been making sure it gets
updated periodically as we get other organizations
that are coming up. We have one new Nature Ninos partner.
(18:53):
That's a friend who's working on starting up a
science and engineering, you know, a STEM activity
center here in town. So now she gets to promote for
free at our events. You know, it gives us that extra
aspect of providing STEM activities. And
our organization's called Yes with an exclamation point, Yavapai
(19:16):
Exploration and Science. And it's a good starting
point for people to promote their
organizations. We promote for them And,
you know, with our junior ranger partners, I don't
ask any of them for financing. I
just say, hey, are you family friendly? Can you provide
(19:37):
these tools to families to better
their situations? And if so, then you can be part of
our program. Tell us a little about the Nature
Ninos program. Yeah. Again, it was started with just
a few small organizations, and it's
nice that every year we have a meeting. We get
(19:59):
with all of these with our city, with surrounding
cities, with the Forest Service, and we work
out which parks we're going to highlight based on the time of year
because some parts of Prescott gets snow, some don't.
And we select one for each
month. And then we also add our Earth Day event so
(20:22):
that we're not doing the same every year. We're providing
a different location for families to go to, but also those that
are within this area so that people
aren't driving too far. We try to make them accessible,
you know, with their locations, with
those who may be on, you know, working on different disabilities. We try
(20:44):
to provide our locations to be ADA
friendly, if not compliant, which Prescott's
working towards. Again, my friend, Park Ranger Ellen,
she has gotten ADA trail put in at the Nature Center
and that has helped out a lot. We have
new paths from in our lake areas, from the
(21:07):
parking lot down to the fishing dock, which didn't
originally exist. And so just, you know, small little things to
make access to these parks. As we do these events,
we notice that, you know, some of our parks may be
lacking in certain areas. So we work to fix that with the city and the
city's fully on board with that, with our recreation
(21:29):
staff, our, you know, city planners or city
managers. And they all want to improve this area
and provide these outdoor programs. So, you know, our
council members, even one of our council members, he runs a
local birding shop called Lookout and he helped
pay for and I donated $1,000 so I could print
(21:52):
750 more books to cover another year. And
so, you know, we're running on a very little budget, but we're able to get
it done because we have dedicated volunteers and a
community that wants these programs and needs them. As you
know, there's a lot of outdoor programs in the area, but
it's not always affordable. I have a
(22:14):
girl in girl scouts and she loves it and we can afford it, but some
people can't afford those programs. And so we provide an alternative
to keep people involved. And we actually have Girl Scouts volunteer and they come
out and they do a booth and they have their scout volunteers.
And it's great to be able to give back. And, you know, with the
scout, you're supposed to do community
(22:38):
events and provide outreach events. So it gives an outlet
for children to do these booths. And like I said, my kids
as junior rangers, they're running their own activity booths
as well. Either my son doing his amphibian station
and it's always packed with parents and kids and
he's letting them know that, you know, certain
(22:59):
things that they thought were amphibians or reptiles and vice
versa. And people are eager to learn. Kids are eager to learn from
their peers. And, you know, this past
Nature Ninos, there was a stage at the park. And
so we brought animal based
costumes and the kids and the volunteers put
(23:21):
on a show for the parents. So all the kids that showed up to
just attend the event got to be in the show and we get them
involved in nature. And since
the previous event was, Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the
Dead, we focused on decomposers. My son was dressed as a
cockroach. And it's just, you know, trying to put different themes
(23:43):
on what our events are so that they're memorable.
Kids get to take them. You know, they build something
with the activity stations, arts and crafts that they can take
home. There's healthy snacks. Our community health services
work through AZ Health Zone grant. And so we're
always encouraging healthy activity to get outdoors
(24:07):
as highlighting that the physical and mental
health aspects of it that
benefit the children, they benefit the adults participating
so that we can, you know, focus better at school, focus better at our job,
be a little less stressed as you know, nature
does that without having to take any meds. And all you
(24:30):
gotta do is go outdoors, and we can do it safely with these programs.
Well, this has been a great conversation because what you
do in Prescott actually makes a difference
in Zion National Park and Glacier National Park because
we have to introduce people to the
nature that's around them if they're ever going to
(24:52):
be concerned enough with it to vote for
conservation, to get involved in conservation, to care whether or
not we have large natural spaces protected.
It all begins in our backyard. And you are doing great work,
Sean, to make sure that the children and the families in
Prescott know what's around them, fall in love with what what
(25:15):
is around them, and are curious enough to want to protect it
everywhere. So I love hearing these stories about the work that you're
doing. Well, I truly appreciate it, and I
love the continuing to hear your other guests
and learn what they have to offer to improve upon these
programs as well. Well, great. So if someone wants
(25:36):
to see more about what you're doing in Prescott, learn about the
junior ranger program, Nature Ninos, where can we go to find out
more? They can just look on our city website. Just, you
know, do a search for Prescott Nature Ninos or Prescott
Junior Rangers, and you can pull up our schedules. You can download
the guidebook for free. Or if you're in the area, you can pick up a
(25:58):
copy at our visitor center or recreation services and go
through the program, join us. And I give out copies of the guidebook
at our Nature for Nino's events, and you can earn your
own Prescott Junior Ranger badge. Alright. Thank you so much for
being with us, Sean, and thank you for listening to the Park Leaders
Show.
Welcome to the park leader show where we are changing the landscape of
leadership in parks and conservation. I'm your host Jody
Mayberry. And joining me for this episode is Sean
Underhill, a park ranger with the city of Prescott, Arizona.
And Prescott is doing some really neat things that
I just thought we needed to talk about, and Sean is just the person to
(00:24):
talk about it with. So welcome to the show, Sean. Thank you, Jody.
It's a pleasure to be on your show after listening it for
for so long. It's nice to be able to give back and
share some of the thoughts and what we're doing here and how others can do
the same. Well, that's I love that because that's what we
do this show for is to connect to the park
(00:46):
ranger community and park professionals all over the country.
And we focus on not national parks, but state
parks, county parks, city parks. So it's it's good to find out
what other people are doing. And as someone who's listened to the show for a
while, hopefully, you've heard that, and you've gotten ideas from other
places and other agencies. And it's great to have a chance to talk to
(01:09):
you. And you're the 1st park ranger from the city of Prescott to
be on the show. Yes. I've noticed that. And Prescott
has a unique set, for its
park ranger system and that it's all volunteer
except really one position, which is
my friend Ellen Bashore, and she's working half
(01:31):
paid by the city, half by the school district to do an
outdoor learning center, working at our community nature center
to provide outdoor programming for the school children within our school
district. And an extension of that has been our
Nature Ninos program and others that
it's been great for the community, but it's not like
(01:53):
a normal even a normal city, park ranger system
where you have those enforcing codes and laws. We
originally started I think it was 2011. The City of
Prescott had volunteer park rangers. It was set up by our Northern
Arizona University to do code enforcement.
And, you know, that's great and, you know, doing parking
(02:15):
violations. But when you're working with volunteers and you're asking them to
go to court, you're not always gonna get people eager or able to
do that. And if you're not paying them, it's hard to do. And
so we saw it, with Ellen, she's, you know, has
a master's in education, saw a way to bring
that outdoor learning to students. And as
(02:37):
she's progressed, she's increased her, I guess, for lack
of a better name, manpower by getting AmeriCorps
volunteers. And there's a great Arizona serve organization
that coordinates AmeriCorps volunteers to
work at the Nature Center as park rangers. And usually these are college
kids working with our Prescott College, which gives them
(02:58):
experience. They can put on their resume. Yeah. I did park ranger work.
And as they progress and go to other park ranger positions,
it helps them out. And it also helps the city out in
that you're getting volunteers, but you're also getting, you know, paid eager
people to do the work and reach out to the children. So it's
become less of code enforcement and law enforcement to
(03:21):
more interpretive ranger work, and it's having a big
impact on our city. Well, this is this is fascinating in a couple
of ways. One is what Sean told us about the change from code
enforcement to interpretation and the impact it's had. That is definitely
one conversation. Another is the city
having mostly or almost
(03:43):
exclusively volunteer park rangers. I don't think
that is common, so there's another conversation. But before we get to
either of those or the topics I specifically thought, oh, I've got to
have Sean on to talk about, I have to address one thing and that is
so a behind the scenes look at the Park Leader Show is before I interview
anybody, I always say, can you pronounce your first and last name for me? As
(04:05):
I did with Sean before we started recording. What I did not do is
say, can you pronounce the name of your town for me? And I've been saying
Prescott, and clearly, you've heard Sean say Prescott. So I've been
saying it wrong all this time. Well, it's a classic
way of knowing who lives here and who's visiting.
And there's arguments throughout Prescott's
(04:27):
history on how to pronounce the name, and you'll see it
both ways. But if you're a native or you've lived here for a
while, it's pronounced Prescott. Yeah. That's good. I now
I've heard it both ways. That reminds me of the show Psych. Have you ever
seen the show Psych? Yes. Great show, and there
is a line in there where, well, a running joke where he would say, I've
(04:49):
heard it both ways, like, if he pronounced a a word wrong. And then
eventually, one time, he said, I've heard it both ways, the right way and
then your way, which I I thought that was funny. Alright,
Sean. Tell us a little bit about your history with the outdoors
and then how you came to be a park ranger with the city
of Prescott. You see how quickly I adapted. Yes.
(05:11):
Well, going back to my history is and talking about
the right way or the wrong way, I've heard there's the right way, the wrong
way and the army way. It's like I have a background in the army. I
was military police or even as civilian
police for the military for the longest time,
got moved up the ranks to an assistant chief. I was even an
(05:33):
acting chief for a while back in my hometown of Yuma at the
Yuma Proving Ground. And now as I grew up there in the
desert, I always admired park rangers and park ranger
work. But if I wanted to get into that there, it'd be working with the
Bureau of Land Management and just driving around the desert all day.
And I wasn't you know, I did that as law enforcement, but it wasn't
(05:55):
something I sought out to do. And my wife, she
was a public defender, got an opportunity to move up to
Prescott, where it's a lot cooler than the desert. We
have pine forests and a
few different environmental areas, a few lakes.
It's lots of hiking opportunities. It's a great
(06:16):
area. So we moved up here. I became a stay at home
dad for about 5 years. And first thing I did
was print out the list of all the parks in the area. And I took
my kids to every park and we evaluated. We ranked these parks on
which one's the best for which features, what time of year to go to these
different parks. And, you know, moving up here, I thought, oh, we're
(06:38):
surrounded by the Prescott National Forest. There'll be
ranger programs. You know, I'm thinking just like you have with
the, you know, the National Park Service, I can take my kids to
those. And unfortunately, they're so thin staffed
here with the national forest is that those programs
don't exist really. And so, you know, that was a little disappointing. There was
(07:00):
no free outdoor programs. And after living here a
while, you know, I take my kids out to the forest all the time just
to play. And once I had the
opportunity, I used my GI bill and I had to go and I'm like,
what do I get my master's in? Something where I can still care for my
kids but do part time schoolwork. So I
(07:21):
looked at Parks and Recreation Management. It was a good one, a good field to
get into different from law enforcement, but still getting out
there in the woods, helping people out. And I had to
pick a program for my master's degree.
I looked at Leave No Trace, and
I noticed that our neighboring national forest was a gold
(07:43):
standard site. So I reached out to our forest because I take my
kids to these dispersed campsites. And as they play in the
dirt, there's broken glass, stuff burned in the burn pits
that's not supposed to be there and, you know, damage to the trees.
I'm like, how can I fix this? So I was thinking putting
Leave No Trace signs at all the campsites. But as I got more into the
(08:05):
program, after my 1st year, I did, you know, a year's worth of
research on Leave No Trace. Signs don't do
much. A lot of the signs end up being shot up. And but
educational programs where you're actually talking to people, they're the
most effective in changing behaviors. So along
with, you know, research leaning that way, after my
(08:28):
1st year of the program, it's only a 2 year program, was looking into
internships. You know, could I volunteer with the forest service? But
then, you know, looking on the AmeriCorps, the Arizona SERVE
website, I noticed there was a park ranger position at our
community nature center. And I had actually gone there with the program for
my daughter, and I met Ellen Bashore and her other rangers
(08:50):
there, and they were doing great work for the city. And I'm like, I didn't
even know the city had park rangers. So I volunteered with
them, and Ellen was doing research into a
junior ranger program, but just gathering materials. And I'm like, I wanna take
this on. And so I started you know, I took
all that research, you know, all that time I spent going to all those different
(09:11):
parks, all that research on leave no trace. I'm like, I can design a
park a junior ranger program around leave no trace
with Arizona specific appreciate AZ version of it
and get all that information from the parks into a junior ranger
book. So the junior ranger book I created, if you just search Prescott
Junior Rangers, you can download it for free. It's bilingual,
(09:33):
and it has a map of the city, but so it
highlights all of those parks, open space. And
I also did a lot of research into the history of the city. So it
has a timeline game of the entire history
from a 1000000 years ago. There's a dormant, well,
extinct volcano in the center of town, between
(09:55):
here and Prescott Valley. And it was just a way to give
back to the community, highlight these issues, and add on
to the programs that the rangers who were there were already
doing with Nature Ninos. They started that up. I got into
it about a year into the program and now it's on its 4th
year and we've just been continuing to expand it because it
(10:17):
targets ages 0 to 8. And
really, you think it's for the kids, but it's also for the parents to
get them information, to let them know that even with an infant, you can
safely take kids outdoors and just introduce them to
other organizations that serve families. So we've
LN partnered with Community Health Services and
(10:39):
which I also work for now. And
you have our University of Arizona Cooperative Extension for
Yavapaya County. And they were the original
startup for Nature Ninos. And now it has a bunch of different
other organizations that serve families and they participate,
they come out, they do different booths, they provide, you know,
(11:02):
scavenger hunts, arts and crafts, all nature based
and encouraging parents to get outdoors. And the key is we
make it free. We do a different park each month,
just 2 hours on a Saturday, and it gets people
outdoors to parks they may not have gone to before. A lot of
them are like, I've never been to this park. I didn't know it had these
(11:23):
features. We highlight if it has ADA features.
And, you know, also while I was designing the Junior Ranger book,
I worked with the National League of Cities, Cities
Connecting Children to Nature, to do an equity study of all of our
parks using GIS mapping. And so as we would go to all these
different parks, we highlighted that, hey, with a
(11:45):
simple ramp, this bathroom would be more accessible. Or if we
put a path here, it would be more accessible, not just to a
wheelchair person, but strollers that families are using or, you
know, add lighting to make it safer. We make sure that
wherever we do a Nature Ninos event, that the trails are safe for
children so that they don't trip, hurt themselves. We
(12:08):
make sure there's no trash around and glass that could hurt
them. So that's a safe environment and parents feel
safe coming out there, introducing their families to nature
because on their own, it's like if I have an infant, I don't want to
go out into the woods. But if I'm with a group of others and
professionals who are trained in education and
(12:30):
safety, they're more willing. And we get a lot of repeat
people, but we also get a lot of new people every year, every month.
So it averages about 150 people at an event.
Sometimes we've had over 300, but we try to keep it around 150.
So, you know, that much people in one location
isn't always good for a park area. So I volunteered as
(12:52):
AmeriCorps for 1 year. Once I got my master's, I
moved on to work for county health. I continued as a volunteer for the
park rangers to help manage the junior ranger program. And
I also got on with the Leave No Trace organization as the
state advocate for Arizona to be able to
reach out further within the state, let others know about these
(13:14):
programs, and also gives me resources for these
events to provide Leave No Trace handouts, but also,
to help others around the state So they can contact me and I can
send them booth kits for Leave No Trace. Let them just continue
to spread the message and, see where we can continue
to provide these free activities for families that they really
(13:37):
need. When you created the Junior Ranger program,
the part that I'm interested in is the idea of creating
it for a city as opposed to
a park that where it's focused just on one park and maybe
it's a big park with a lot of property and so it's easy to
create a program there. What is the key to
(14:00):
a successful city level junior ranger program as opposed
to one for a larger park? Yeah. That's one thing
that I didn't touch on is what makes this program unique
is that well, not unique. Other programs have passports.
Our state parks have a passport to each state park, but you have to go
all around the whole state. For ours, I made a passport on
(14:23):
it for organizations within the city, our
museums, our, you know, libraries,
just places that are family friendly. So that
as a family, a parent takes this Junior
Ranger book, they'll open it up, they'll see the passport,
and there's about 20 different organizations on there.
(14:46):
They only have to visit 7 of them. 1, to
lead into their 7 Leave No Trace principles. But also
if somebody is just visiting on a weekend, yeah, I can do 7 of
these. A lot of them are in their downtown area. Now there's some
specialty toy shops that do some local businesses.
We have a few different museums, our Museum of
(15:10):
Indigenous People, our Charlotte Hall Museum highlights the
territorial history of the area. And we
even have a planetarium. So we just have people
go to these different organizations. They get a stamp and then
they can return to our downtown visitor center or recreation
services and they get a junior
(15:32):
ranger badge. It's a wooden badge, you
know, sustainably sourced wood. And it's
something that people can feel they can earn, accomplish.
They can be done in a weekend or over summer.
When I initially came out with it, I had it
distributed through our library summer reading program. I worked with our
(15:54):
tourism office to get Appreciate AZ
funds to print the initial 1,000 booklets and
buy the badges. And really
that's anybody can do that. You just need somebody
willing, you know, with some graphic design skills. I use the
Canva program. It's pretty common with a lot of organizations,
(16:16):
but any program you can design it in and you just look
at, you know, I looked at other city and, you
know, state, federal junior ranger programs. We collected all the
information we wanted and made it specific to our
area. And that's why a lot of people like it because it
is specific to this city. And you get
(16:39):
those that historical aspect, that his
cultural, the ecology of the area, learning about the specific
animals and plants that are within the city that you'll see in your
backyard. And it also, you know, with that,
makes people more aware, makes those living here more
aware of what's around them. And as visitors come here,
(17:01):
they appreciate Prescott more because they have a quick
resource to learn about it. How many
families that do the junior ranger program say
Prescott and how many say Prescott? Or another way to ask it, how
many families that do the junior ranger program are from out
of the area and how many are from in the area?
(17:24):
Well, that's one thing that is difficult to
say because, you know, we print those 1,000 books, and within a year, they
were gone. We also do a annual Earth Day festival
where we give them out. And the thing with
making them free to download online is it's hard to tell
who's getting these books. I remember talking to our library,
(17:47):
one of our librarians, and she said there was a
lady who was having trouble printing something. And when she asked her what she was
printing, she's like, oh, the Junior Ranger book. And she said,
fortunately, she had copies that I had given her. So she's like, here, you can
have a copy. And and she was from a city that was, you
know, 50 miles away. They were just visiting and they wanted to
(18:08):
go through the program. We get a lot from our Phoenix area,
which is, you know, a 100 miles away. They come up to get Escape the
Heat and, you know, go through this program. Hard to get
statistics on that, but we have say roughly 2,000
who have gone through the book so far and we have plenty of
badges available. I even had some printed in Spanish if anybody wanted
(18:31):
those versions, but I made sure to get
it translated into Spanish as that was the most common
secondary language in the area. And, you know, if I have time, we'll
continue to do more, but I've been making sure it gets
updated periodically as we get other organizations
that are coming up. We have one new Nature Ninos partner.
(18:53):
That's a friend who's working on starting up a
science and engineering, you know, a STEM activity
center here in town. So now she gets to promote for
free at our events. You know, it gives us that extra
aspect of providing STEM activities. And
our organization's called Yes with an exclamation point, Yavapai
(19:16):
Exploration and Science. And it's a good starting
point for people to promote their
organizations. We promote for them And,
you know, with our junior ranger partners, I don't
ask any of them for financing. I
just say, hey, are you family friendly? Can you provide
(19:37):
these tools to families to better
their situations? And if so, then you can be part of
our program. Tell us a little about the Nature
Ninos program. Yeah. Again, it was started with just
a few small organizations, and it's
nice that every year we have a meeting. We get
(19:59):
with all of these with our city, with surrounding
cities, with the Forest Service, and we work
out which parks we're going to highlight based on the time of year
because some parts of Prescott gets snow, some don't.
And we select one for each
month. And then we also add our Earth Day event so
(20:22):
that we're not doing the same every year. We're providing
a different location for families to go to, but also those that
are within this area so that people
aren't driving too far. We try to make them accessible,
you know, with their locations, with
those who may be on, you know, working on different disabilities. We try
(20:44):
to provide our locations to be ADA
friendly, if not compliant, which Prescott's
working towards. Again, my friend, Park Ranger Ellen,
she has gotten ADA trail put in at the Nature Center
and that has helped out a lot. We have
new paths from in our lake areas, from the
(21:07):
parking lot down to the fishing dock, which didn't
originally exist. And so just, you know, small little things to
make access to these parks. As we do these events,
we notice that, you know, some of our parks may be
lacking in certain areas. So we work to fix that with the city and the
city's fully on board with that, with our recreation
(21:29):
staff, our, you know, city planners or city
managers. And they all want to improve this area
and provide these outdoor programs. So, you know, our
council members, even one of our council members, he runs a
local birding shop called Lookout and he helped
pay for and I donated $1,000 so I could print
(21:52):
750 more books to cover another year. And
so, you know, we're running on a very little budget, but we're able to get
it done because we have dedicated volunteers and a
community that wants these programs and needs them. As you
know, there's a lot of outdoor programs in the area, but
it's not always affordable. I have a
(22:14):
girl in girl scouts and she loves it and we can afford it, but some
people can't afford those programs. And so we provide an alternative
to keep people involved. And we actually have Girl Scouts volunteer and they come
out and they do a booth and they have their scout volunteers.
And it's great to be able to give back. And, you know, with the
scout, you're supposed to do community
(22:38):
events and provide outreach events. So it gives an outlet
for children to do these booths. And like I said, my kids
as junior rangers, they're running their own activity booths
as well. Either my son doing his amphibian station
and it's always packed with parents and kids and
he's letting them know that, you know, certain
(22:59):
things that they thought were amphibians or reptiles and vice
versa. And people are eager to learn. Kids are eager to learn from
their peers. And, you know, this past
Nature Ninos, there was a stage at the park. And
so we brought animal based
costumes and the kids and the volunteers put
(23:21):
on a show for the parents. So all the kids that showed up to
just attend the event got to be in the show and we get them
involved in nature. And since
the previous event was, Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the
Dead, we focused on decomposers. My son was dressed as a
cockroach. And it's just, you know, trying to put different themes
(23:43):
on what our events are so that they're memorable.
Kids get to take them. You know, they build something
with the activity stations, arts and crafts that they can take
home. There's healthy snacks. Our community health services
work through AZ Health Zone grant. And so we're
always encouraging healthy activity to get outdoors
(24:07):
as highlighting that the physical and mental
health aspects of it that
benefit the children, they benefit the adults participating
so that we can, you know, focus better at school, focus better at our job,
be a little less stressed as you know, nature
does that without having to take any meds. And all you
(24:30):
gotta do is go outdoors, and we can do it safely with these programs.
Well, this has been a great conversation because what you
do in Prescott actually makes a difference
in Zion National Park and Glacier National Park because
we have to introduce people to the
nature that's around them if they're ever going to
(24:52):
be concerned enough with it to vote for
conservation, to get involved in conservation, to care whether or
not we have large natural spaces protected.
It all begins in our backyard. And you are doing great work,
Sean, to make sure that the children and the families in
Prescott know what's around them, fall in love with what what
(25:15):
is around them, and are curious enough to want to protect it
everywhere. So I love hearing these stories about the work that you're
doing. Well, I truly appreciate it, and I
love the continuing to hear your other guests
and learn what they have to offer to improve upon these
programs as well. Well, great. So if someone wants
(25:36):
to see more about what you're doing in Prescott, learn about the
junior ranger program, Nature Ninos, where can we go to find out
more? They can just look on our city website. Just, you
know, do a search for Prescott Nature Ninos or Prescott
Junior Rangers, and you can pull up our schedules. You can download
the guidebook for free. Or if you're in the area, you can pick up a
(25:58):
copy at our visitor center or recreation services and go
through the program, join us. And I give out copies of the guidebook
at our Nature for Nino's events, and you can earn your
own Prescott Junior Ranger badge. Alright. Thank you so much for
being with us, Sean, and thank you for listening to the Park Leaders
Show.
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