NATIONAL PARK RANGERS: JANUARY 9, 2009 – A DAY TO REMEMBER; MORE GUNS IN NATIONAL PARKS

Members of Three National Park Service Employee Organizations Voice Serious Concerns About New Rule

TUCSON, AZ. – January 9, 2009 – Current and former National Park Service employees, many of them Law Enforcement Rangers and Park Interpretive Rangers today expressed serious alarm over the potential risks of the new rule to be implemented by the Department of the Interior that would allow concealed firearms in national parks.

“This new rule is fraught with a variety of threats and hazards to the solitude and atmosphere visitors have come to appreciate and to seek in national parks,” said Bill Wade, Chair of the Executive Council of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees (CNPSR) and former superintendent of Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. CNPSR has over 690 members, all former NPS employees, with over 20,500 accumulated years of experience in managing national parks and NPS programs, including law enforcement and visitor services. Added Wade, “Beyond the risks to natural and historic resources in parks, we are troubled by the likelihood that the way park visitors relate to each other will be affected. Until now, parks have been conducive to visitors having casual chats with each other on hikes. Not uncommonly, visitors camped next to each other share a morning cup of coffee. This open social interaction is liable to change as suspicion and apprehension about the possession of concealed firearms makes people more distrustful.”

Scot McElveen, a retired Chief Park Ranger and President of the Association of National Park Rangers, with a membership of 1200 consisting of both current and former NPS employees expressed apprehension about the ability of the NPS to provide the best available protection to park resources under the new rule. “Park wildlife, including some rare or endangered species, will face increased threats by visitors with firearms who engage in impulse or opportunistic shooting,” said McElveen. “We also worry about increased vandalistic shooting at historic monuments, archeological petroglyphs and park signs and markers.”

McElveen also described situations in parks that will be confusing or troubling:
• How will a family with small children who are on a Ranger-guided tour feel about the fact that other visitors on the tour very well could have concealed guns in their pockets or backpacks?
• How will visitors attending an evening program at an amphitheater in a park campground feel about the possibility that others attending the program could have firearms in their purses or jackets?
• Firearms will still be prohibited in most Federal buildings, but will parks now have to provide places for visitors to check their firearms before entering visitor centers or ranger stations? Or will they have to install and staff metal detectors to ensure that firearms don’t get brought inside?
• Some parks lie in more than one state. Natchez Trace Parkway, for instance spans three states, each with a different gun law. What do visitors do when they pass from Tennessee to
Alabama and then to Mississippi?
• Some park visitors have a predisposition to kill on sight animals that they believe to be “varmints.” Such animals include coyotes, wolves, prairie dogs, snakes, and some raptors. Even though harming such animals has been illegal and will continue to be illegal under the new rule, having a loaded, readily-accessible firearm increases the chances that these visitors will act on their misplaced beliefs and fears.

John Waterman, a Law Enforcement Ranger at Valley Forge National Historical Park and President of the Ranger Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police, representing the majority commissioned NPS Law Enforcement Rangers worries about employee and visitor safety and visitor confusion. He said, “This new regulation has replaced a clear and consistent regulation prohibiting guns in all national parks unless they are rendered inoperable and inaccessible, with one that opens a Pandora’s Box of confusing exceptions. Now, if you are in a national park in a state that allows concealed firearms and if you have a concealed-carry permit; or if the state you're from has reciprocal laws with the state you are in, then maybe you can carry a gun, but not in public buildings or if the state says you can't have one in a public park.... This is a regulatory nightmare both for the public and for Rangers.” Waterman also says, “More guns means more risk. For example, Rangers sometimes have to intervene in disputes in campgrounds. With the possibilities of guns being present, the risk increases, not only to the disputants, but to the Rangers who have to resolve the problem. Moreover, traffic stops now become more hazardous for Rangers in parks.”

Wade scoffed at the intent of the Department of the Interior in ramming this regulation through without appropriate analysis of the impacts it will have on national park resources and visitors. “They said it would increase consistency for the public. Clearly it doesn’t. They said there won’t be any impacts to park resources or visitors. But thousands of current and former Rangers and other employees – who actually work or worked in parks – say otherwise. They said this is what the American people wanted, but over 70% of the 140,000 who commented during the public comment period opposed the proposed rule. They said, ‘if you can carry a gun on Main Street you can now carry a gun in a national park.’ We don’t think Americans want their national parks to be like their main streets; they go to parks because they are special and different, and knowing they can get away from the pressures and stresses they face where they live and work.”

“January 9, 2009 is not a good day for national parks or for their visitors,” Wade added. “We hope the new Interior Secretary will reconsider this ill-advised regulation and keep national parks special and safe.”

# # # # #

Contacts:
• For the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees: Bill Wade – 520-615-9417;
• For the Association of National Park Rangers: Scot McElveen – 423-286-8644;
• For the Ranger Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police: John Waterman or George Durkee - 800-407-8295