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heaped upon their shoulders. If a trail is to be blazed, it is ‘send a ranger.’ If an
animal is floundering in the snow, a ranger is sent to pull him out; if a bear is in the
hotel, if a fire threatens a forest, if someone is to be saved, it is ‘send a ranger.’ If a
Dude wants to know the why, if a Sagebrusher is puzzled about a road, it is ‘ask the
ranger.’ Everything the ranger knows, he will tell you, ex-cept about himself

A ranger’s role requires a commitment to public service and a willingness to help in many regards.
Some of the core attributes required to meet this responsibility include:
• Teaching others how to do something;
• Actively looking for ways to help people;
• Considering the relative costs and benefits of potential actions to choose which are most
appropriate;
• Being aware of others’ reactions and understanding why they react as they do;
• Talking to others to convey information effectively; and
• Using logic and reasoning to identify strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions,
conclusions, or approaches to problems.

Community Rangering

Community rangering is a value system that permeates the work group, and rangers’ primary goals
are to work cooperatively with citizens, user groups, and organizations to identify and resolve issues
that potentially affect the livability and enjoyment of specific OSMP areas. The following are major
components of community rangering:
• Geographic responsibility: The ranger work group will use a more focused and proactive
approach to handling problems and complaints by spending more time in identified
“communities” rather than on random patrols throughout the system. These areas will be
identified using visitor use and conflict data. Rangers will have specific “communities” or
user groups to work with for significant periods of time in order to identify issues, meet
local users, and work to proactively solve these issues.
• Working with the community: Rangers will work with user groups in their individual
communities to identify and solve specific issues. Rangers will not only address issues they
feel are important, but, more importantly, issues that are important to the visitors in their
communities and to the department.
• Problem-oriented rangering: Community rangering means shifting the work group’s focus
from random foot patrols to problem-oriented rangering. This means rangers will work
proactively on identified issues in their communities.
• Emphasis on quality: Rangers will be evaluated on the success of their community
rangering goals by qualitative measurements, and to a lesser extent, quantitative
measurements. Community feedback, survey results, and participation at ranger-sponsored
events are all methods used to evaluate the success of community rangering goals in
addition to traditional measurements such as ticket numbers, miles hiked, time spent in the
district, and so on.

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