According to the "Knoxville Sentinel" and the link below at Knoxnews.com officials at the Great Smokey Mountains National Park had to euthenize a black bear after it bit a photographer. See the details at the link below.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2010/jun/24/smokies-hiker-charged-fatal-photo-encounter-laurel/

Following an investigation by Park Rangers, the photographer has been charged with interfering with and molesting wildlife. It was discovered that the photographer approached within one foot of the wild bear to get a close up. The bear reacted to this threat and bit what appeared to be an overly aggressive human on the foot.

The bear was put to death due to a park policy that any bear that causes injury to a human will be destroyed.

Learn more about being safe around wildlife and what you can do to help protect them in National Parks in my book "A Park Ranger's Life: Thirty Two Years Protecting Our National Parks."

Joys of Rural Living

Over the years we have entertained many overnight visitors who comment on how rural the area we live in appears. I have to admit that our local options for goods and services are somewhat limited, but it is not as remote as it may seem. After all, we do have our own telephone book issued every year by Verizon that include the “Superyellowpages.” We just received our annual edition for Raphine, Virginia in the mail yesterday.

Here are some facts that bust that middle of nowhere myth:

Our phone book includes 12 pages of instructions on how to use your phone to make calls.

This is followed by 11 ½ pages of residential telephone numbers.

The “Superyellowpages” are much lengthier at 35 pages.

Within those 35 pages are 5 full page and 44 other ads for the “Superyellowpages.”

We have 4 restaurants to choose from listed in the ads:

Burger King, Frank’s Pizza, McDonalds, and Wendy’s (all located near the interstate)

There are also 4 Septic Tank Services listed in the book.

With all these services and the telephone company at our side, I would argue that we are not quite so cut off from society as some may believe.

And think about the next time you want to show off your upper body strength. Wouldn’t you rather rip our phone book in half than yours?

2010 Raphine, Virginia Telephone Book

Murdered Park Ranger Remembered on The Blue Ridge Parkway

The following is taken from the National Park Service Morning Report for June 24, 2010-

Rangers salute Joe Kolodski and his sacrifice at the site of his murder, Big Witch Gap on the Blue Ridge Parkway NPS photo.

This past Monday, June 21st, marked the twelfth anniversary of the murder of Ranger Joe Kolodski.

Kolodski, a ranger at Great Smoky Mountains, was shot and killed responding to a report of a man with a rifle threatening visitors at Big Witch Gap on the Blue Ridge Parkway. He was ambushed and shot as he stood beside his patrol car.

At 2:50 p.m., the time at which Kolodski was killed, over 25 rangers and officers from the Blue Ridge Parkway, Great Smoky Mountains, and nearby cooperating agencies, gathered at the site. The Blue Ridge and Smokies dispatch centers broadcast notices asking for a moment of silence to remember the tragedy and to honor the sacrifice he made.

On a memorial outside the Blue Ridge Parkway Headquarters Building, the following words are inscribed: "On June 21, 1998, while protecting visitors from harm, United States Park Ranger Joseph D. Kolodski was slain in the line of duty. His service and sacrifice to the National Park Service and the people of this country will never be forgotten."

By continuing to remember, we continue to learn and grow as an agency and as a team. Please take a moment to honor Joe by remembering him and the sacrifice he and his family made; Joe left behind a wife, Florie, and three children, Rachel, Sarah, and Samuel.

Contact Information

Name: Lena Boesser-Koschmann, Assistant Chief Ranger

Joe, your sacrifice is not forgotten.

Core Ops Budget Process DOA

For years National Parks have been required to go through a directed budgetary exercise called Core Ops.  This process involved a trained team of facilitators coming to a park for several days to lead the park’s management staff through a budgetary process to focus their attention on the core mission of the park.  This process has a well meaning description, but the underlying purpose was to force park superintendents to make deep cuts into already strapped budgets and staffs.  The visiting teams and regional offices were never satisfied until the teams identified major expenditure cuts and reductions in staffing. 

A park superintendent who was already doing an outstanding job in managing their budget and keeping all funded operations directly related to their mission were still required to make even more cuts to satisfy the money gods in Washington.  The park rangers and other employees in the field were left with the perception that the underlying purpose of this program was to show politicians that the National Park Service could do with less money and thus look good.

It is interesting all the emotions that the Core Ops topic brings out.  I remember going through a very painful few days of a Core Ops workshop on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Although the park's managers could exhibit reams of cost saving measures that had already been taken and lists of positions (as many as 60 permanent jobs in this one park) that were being left vacant the team wanted more and more cuts no matter what the cost to the mission of the agency.  One division became defensive and after a breakout session decided that everything they did was core mission and that they should suffer no cuts and money should be taken from other divisions to support their operations.  The result was not a team building exercise but the creation of derision within the park. The budget processes that the Core Ops team kept pressing were already dogma on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

With the limited budgets that parks are given, managers are making core mission decisions on a daily basis.  If they are not basing decisions for expenditures based on the agency’s mission, then why are they in their positions? 

As tax payers we want our government to be conscious of frivolous spending and our officials responsible to the job they were hired to do.  Core Ops was a very expensive overkill to obtain political budgetary compliance.

The final result of my experience with Core Ops was a huge bill to the park to pay for the Core Ops Team, their multiple trainees, and special observers and guests from the regional office visit Asheville, N.C.  Where is the money savings in that?

John Jarvis the Director of the National Park Service has put an end to Core Ops.  I say bravo to Director Jarvis for putting this expensive politically popular giant to bed.  National Parks will not longer be subject to this expensive and painful process.

To learn more and have a better understanding to the subject, go to the National Parks Traveler web site at:

http://nationalparkstraveler.com/2009/12/core-ops-budgeting-national-park-system-goes-silently-night5111

Fellow Writer Reviews "A Park Ranger's Life"

The following review of "A Park Ranger's Life" was written by former National Park Ranger and author Andrea Lankford.  Ms. Lankford has published four books related to National Parks;

Ranger Confidential: Living, Working, and Dying in the National Parks
Haunted Hikes: Spine-Tingling Tales and Trails from North America's National Parks
Biking the Arizona Trail: The Complete Guide to Day-Riding and Thru-Biking
Biking the Grand Canyon Area

Bytnar's chilling story about the haunted colonial mansion was alone worth the price of admission. But, as readers of A Park Ranger's Life will discover, historic haints and wayward bears addicted to Kentucky Fried Chicken are the least of a park ranger's worries. 

In Bytnar's book, A Park Ranger's Life: Thirty-Two Years of Protecting Our National Parks, the veteran ranger tells the real story behind what it is like to patrol the Blue Ridge Parkway, a 469-mile long park through some of the best scenery the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and North Carolina have to offer. 

At times Mr. Bytnar's misadventures with wily fugitives, inept sheriffs, and park managers who make rattlesnakes seem cuddly are hilarious for us to read. Although these events must have seemed less funny at the time Bytnar was experiencing them. "Living in a national park is not the ideal situation that most people envision," the veteran park ranger tells us. "You end up living with your job 24 hours a day." 

With his modest and articulate voice, Bytnar epitomizes what we would like our park rangers to be. Sturdy, good-humored, and fearless, he is a real-life Dudley Do-right who adores his family and pays for the apple coveted by a hungry but penniless boy inside a country store. But even for the likes of Bytnar something has to give. 

For more about Bytnar and his book, A Park Ranger's Life, here's a story that appeared in National Parks Traveler (an excellent webzine on National Parks). 
http://nationalparkstraveler.com/2010/05/ask-ranger-violence-nothing-new-blue-ridge-parkway5898

Conditions Along the Mexican Border

A very interesting and informative article about the affects of illegal activities along our border with Mexico on public lands can be found at:

http://www.examiner.com/x-35821-Immigration-Reform-Examiner~y2010m6d17-Our-national-parks-have-been-surrendered-to-the-Mexican-drug-cartels-wshocking-video

The article references the murder of National Park Ranger Kris Eggle at Organ Pipe National Monument in 2002.

A marijuana grow operation as described in this article and accompanying video was found on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia several years ago.

A friend recently forwarded this photo of a sign in Arizona placed near the Mexican Border by the Bureau of Land Management

Park Rangering in Africa

The following is taken from the web site "the province - a division of camwest pulblishing, Inc."

Park rangers kill 2 Congo soldiers over dead

elephant

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE JUNE 22, 2010

National park rangers in the Democratic Republic of Congo killed two soldiers after the troops killed an elephant at a protected site, one of the rangers said Monday.

The rangers "killed immediately" the soldiers from the 18th Brigade of the Congolese army in the clash on Sunday in Virunga National Park in eastern Congo, one of the rangers said on condition of anonymity.

"One of us is injured," the ranger added.

A local group, Innovation for the Development and Protection of the Environment, said the incident happened two kilometres from the park's Rwindi Bridge.

According to IDPE, soldiers killed 12 elephants in the area in May and have armed young people to encourage poaching on the site.

Set up in 1925, the Virunga National Park is classed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and it is the oldest game reserve in Africa.

It is home notably to 200 mountain gorillas and a small population of plains gorillas, a species strongly faced with the threat of extinction.

But the park, on the northeastern border with Uganda, is a base not only to army units but to warring militia groups and rebel forces, all of whom kill animals for food and chop down trees for charcoal to burn.

To read this story at its original site go to:

http://www.theprovince.com/travel/Park+rangers+kill+Congo+soldiers+over+dead+elephant/3184716/story.html

New Template and Format

For you returning readers, you may have noted the change in the appearance of this site.  I have made some updates and used a new template.  What do you think?  Let me know in the comments section below.

Indiana Road Trip

I have not been on the blog for a week since my family and I have been on the road to Northern Indiana.  My cousin’s son has just graduated from high school and we went to attend the festivities and enjoy Hoosier farm land hospitality and cooking.

On the road trip from Virginia we passed through Nelsonville, Ohio the home of Hocking College.  This brought back fond memories of the several National Park Service employees I hired who graduated from this school’s Seasonal Law Enforcement Training Program.

We stopped overnight in Columbus, Ohio the home of Ohio State University one of the colleges making use of my book in their curriculum teaching resource protection.  While cruising from our hotel looking for a promising place to eat, we happened upon one of those wonderful surprises you do not expect.  While stopped at a light I looked to my left and noticed an attractive brick lined business district.  It looked like someone had plopped a small New England town in the middle of Ohio.  We later discovered that this is exactly what had happened back in 1803 when the first white settlers moved into the area from Connecticut and Massachusetts establishing the town of Worthington.

In the midst of this picturesque business district we found the “La Chatelaine French Bakery and Café.”  The authentic French cuisine was incredible, the baked chicken to die for.  We enjoyed the food and atmosphere sitting in the street side café so much that a return the next morning for breakfast was mandatory.  In fact, our return journey several days later was structured around another visit to “La Chatelaine.”  This food experience made such an impression that my wife is now checking real estate prices in the area.

Once in Indiana we made a quick stop to check on Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.  This is an oasis of natural Lake Michigan shore line preserving the mountainous (by flat Indiana regional standards) sand dunes.  The park land is sandwiched between the industrial might that built our country with power plants on one side and steel mills on the other.  Along with the habitat of the dunes you will find swimming beaches, historic farm buildings, campgrounds, and nature trails.  This park is almost next door to Gary, Indiana (the birthplace of Michael Jackson) and about an hour and a half from Chicago (the home town of the Cubs.  My family would disown me if I did not get that plug in here).

Now back in Virginia there is gardening to catch up on as well as blogging to be done.  So let the writing begin!

Blue Ridge Parkway 75th Anniversary Event

Drawing by Carlton Abbott

On Sunday June 13th I attended an event to celebrate the opening of the Nelson Scenic Loop and the 75th Anniversary of the Blue Ridge Parkway at Skylark Farms in Virginia. About 300 people enjoyed a day of traditional mountain music, kite flying, picnicking, displays, presentations, and an opportunity to purchase a signed copy of my book “A Park Ranger’s Life.”

Notable amongst the presenters was the renowned landscape architect Carlton Abbott. Mr. Abbott’s father was Stanley Abbott one of the initial designers and first Superintendent of The Blue Ridge Parkway. Carlton Abbott is an award winning architect and land planner recognized for his talent as an artist through his pen and ink architectural drawings. The audience was captivated by Mr. Abbott’s stories of his father and growing up with the Blue Ridge Parkway in its early days.

I was pleased that one of my books was purchased by Carlton Abbott to add to his personal collection. I also got an inside scoop that he is working on his own book about the Blue Ridge Parkway that will feature many of his incredible drawings. I plan to add that book to my collection when it is published.

Shown in the Photo Above Doris Broker from the Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway, Carlton Abbott, and Bruce Bytnar at the Nelson Loop and Blue Ridge Parkway 75th Anniversary Event at Skylark Farms

Interesting Blue Ridge Parkway Facts gleaned from the presentations:

10% of all the bridges in National Park Service areas are on the Blue Ridge Parkway

37% of all the tunnels in National Park Service areas are on the Blue Ridge Parkway