Last week, 10 National Park Service (NPS) Academy students from Colorado Northwestern Community College (CNCC) participated in a service project at the Shield Interpretive site, a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) location a few miles outside Rangely.
Chuck Huyck, NPS program director, led them on this service project. The site has previously experienced vandalism to the petroglyphs, indicating that someone tried to steal a portion of it. Not only is this highly illegal, but it damages the area’s heritage and robs future generations of cultural and community values.
The NPS students will graduate on Friday, May 5, with law enforcement training and supportive training in EMT, wildfire, and search and rescue services — skills they might need in the field. Graduates seek employment as law enforcement rangers for the NPS. A typical experience might include informing campers of laws, citing a driver for speeding, or investigating a vandalism act on protected grounds.
Student Spencer Jenkins, who hails from Iowa, said the training options available specifically through CNCC’s NPS program were one reason he chose CNCC over other programs. CNCC offers wilderness, radar certification, and field sobriety tests (SFTs) as part of the academy. The NPS academy in Rangely also provides housing as a benefit, which can be challenging to find elsewhere. Other students cited seeking environmental changes, following in family footsteps, traveling opportunities, and a love for the natural world.
Two rangers, Raphael Bassler of Pennslyvania and Natalie Woller of New Jersey, have seasonal jobs waiting for them upon graduation. Bassler will serve in Dinosaur, Colorado, and Waller will head to Rainier National Park.
“We train to protect the park from people, people from the park, and people from people,” Bassler explained. Other duties they expect to perform include direction, common sense direction, and poaching enforcement. There are different types of rangers in the field.
While projects like the one at the Shield Interpretive site are outside the student’s regular curriculum and cleaning up is not necessarily in the expected job description for rangers, signage informs visitors, “It is illegal to dump trash or other things items on public lands. You could be fined, made to pay for cleaning up trash, and/or be arrested.” Enforcing this law and protecting the resources are typical ranger duties.
For NPS students, the landscape and environment of northwestern Colorado are unique because of the proximity to Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land. At the same time, the small community offers opportunities for students to interact with local landmarks and districts, enriching the learning experience and benefiting the community.
Special to the Herald Times
