Given the amount of work to be done at most USACE lakes, it’s not surprising that a ranger’s duties would change over the course of a career – but at most sites, they also change within the course of a calendar year. Michelle Frobose is a park ranger at the Willamette Valley Project, which encompasses 13 dams and reservoirs within Oregon’s Willamette River Basin in a roughly 150-mile span from Portland south to Cottage Grove. Her official title, like Kelley’s, is natural resource specialist – but she rarely calls herself that. “Ninety percent of the people don’t know what a natural resource specialist is,” she said. “But they know what a park ranger is.”
Much of Frobose’s time during the summer is spent assisting visitors – from basic orientation and water safety to helping them through medical emergencies at 200 campsites and 25 day-use areas spread among the project. Public safety is also a large component of her job, with improvement projects for accessibility as well as testing and educational outreach concerning toxic algae blooms. She also mentors and plans workloads for the seasonal staff among the 13 different reservoirs. In the off-season, she said, there’s a huge amount of legwork to be done in preparing for summer visitation – for example, trail maintenance, which she often organizes in conjunction with a mountain biking club from Eugene. “There’s so much work I can get done in the winter that would not get done without volunteers and organized groups,” she said. “Being able to give them not only the supplies but the support they need takes a lot of time, but it produces amazing benefits for the Army Corps of Engineers and for the visiting public.”
Children from Maple elementary School enjoy some exercise outdoors at the Effie Yeaw Nature Center, Carmichael, Calif., Sept. 27, 2011. USACE park rangers taught the life cycle of salmon with a jump rope game, where getting entangled represents the hazards of water turbines to the fish. the event was in support of President Barack Obama’s America’s Great outdoors Initiative, established in April 2010. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Michael J. Nevins
Every recreation site has its own challenges for USACE rangers, and the size and sprawl of the Willamette Valley Project often stretches the available staff, which has shrunk in response to budget constraints. The main recreation ranger office is at Cottage Grove Reservoir, at the southern end of the valley, where most of the public facilities managed by USACE are concentrated. But some project sites are more than a two-hour drive away. Green Peter Reservoir, a hydropower and flood protection reservoir on the Middle Santiam River, is far away enough from Cottage Grove to create many challenges in managing dispersed camping. “We don’t get up there very often due to our available staffing and budget,” said Frobose. “And we have some higher levels of resource damage up there … a lot of litter, a lot of roadside dumping. We, on occasion, have trees that are cut down illegally.” To continue providing quality services to the public while still fulfilling their stewardship mission at Green Peter, the rangers are exploring a partnership with a nearby county park to leverage the resources of each in the area.
At Hartwell Lake, a thinning ranger staff poses a real dilemma, said Kelley, given the fact that its 10 million annual visitors are growing more diverse. “When you’re talking about that many people – people who own adjacent properties, the people who visit our parks, people from different cultures who come just for the day to go swimming at one of our recreation facilities – delivering our message of water safety and boating safety is our biggest challenge,” he said. “When I started here, we had a very good staff available to us to go out and preach this message, and we did a very good job covering that amount. But funding continues to get hit, which directly effects staffing … currently our biggest challenge is getting the amount of exposure we once had with fewer people. And that is a constant struggle.”
Recent weather patterns have complicated this struggle for Hartwell Lake rangers: Prolonged drought has significantly lowered the lake level. “That vastly changes our message,” said Kelley. “When we have normal pool levels we’re talking about safety in designated swim beaches and wearing your life jacket. But with low water levels, we’re talking about being careful about unexpected drop-offs, because our designated beaches are dry. We’re talking about underwater hazards.”
Because an increasing number of visitors to the lake are Spanish-speaking, Kelley and his colleagues are learning some rudimentary messages to deliver to them: “We’ve got an account with Rosetta Stone®, where we’re trying to learn some basic water safety slogans and messages we can give to customer groups that are starting to come in the area.”
Like most jobs with USACE, being a ranger isn’t easy, and it requires constant adaptation to changing circumstances – but most rangers wouldn’t have it any other way. Frobose said she’s worked hard to achieve what she calls her dream job: “I work for USACE because I really do believe in protecting natural resources, and I believe in guiding people to recreate responsibly and safely. I also really believe USACE plays a very important role, among all the different federal and local agencies, in creating those different niches for different recreational users.”
“I’m proud to be a park ranger,” said Kelley. “I have an opportunity every day to affect people’s lives in a positive way. When you manage a resource like a body of water, people have a natural attraction to it. And we have the desire to give people a great recreational experience while protecting the land and water.”
This article originally appeared in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: Building Strong®, Serving the Nation and the Armed Forces 2012-2013 Edition.