Quoted from appended article published today and titled "Park volunteers aren't just greeters and gatekeepers anymore."

"Volunteers free up rangers to do other things, said Peter Krulder, manager of Honeymoon Island State Park at Dunedin."

MUCH more importantly, the increasing use of volunteers frees up politicians to reduce taxes which, in turn, results in more severe under-funding of park managers. Park managers, in turn, have no option other than to rely more heavily upon volunteers. It is a spiral to the doom of public parks.  It is a spiral planned by those advancing a privatization agenda.

The issue goes much deeper than volunteers providing cheap labor. Those who seek to shrink government to the size that it can be dragged into the bathroom and drowned in the tub are manipulating the altruism of volunteers and turning it into a tool for destroying our civil society and creating a privatized "ownership society" that is more to their liking. 

Here is a google search for the combination of the terms "volunteerism, privatization, parks"  

That link takes you to 405,000 hits, the first two of which just happen to have been written by me.  You can skip over those because you've heard what I've had to say on this topic before.  Ignoring my warnings, you will still have 449,998 other articles from which to draw.
 
Scott 

--- begtin quoted ---

October 4, 2006
Sioux City (IA) Journal
Park volunteers aren't just greeters and gatekeepers anymore

DUNEDIN, Fla. (AP) -- When Ruth Ann Anderson of Tomahawk, Wis., organizes for another winter stay at a Florida state park, her industrial-grade sewing machine is packed along with the beach sundries.

Colin Grissom of Salt Lake City is a "climbing doctor" whose treks in Alaska's Denali National Park and Preserve helped prepare him for a career in critical care medicine.

And Neil Perro, a retired industrial engineer from Mardston Lake, Vt., reviews safety and building codes before heading to Florida because he never knows what he and his wife, Pat, will be working on when not relaxing on their boat, which often is tied up to a state park dock.

All are long-time volunteers, contributing many weeks of public service at state or federal parks over the years. They bring specific skills to some of the most picturesque settings in North America. They also serve to illustrate that your typical park volunteer is not just a greeter and gatekeeper anymore.

Some 7,000 people donated an estimated $18.4 million in labor to Florida's park system during fiscal 2004-2005, said Phillip Werndli, coordinator of the system's statewide volunteer programs.

"That's people who give us 20 hours a week plus," Werndli said. "We have another 15,000 or 20,000 who do episodic work. Beach cleanup and things like that."

Florida logged 1.52 million hours of volunteer effort at its 159 state parks last year.

"That's the first time in history we've topped a million hours and we're the first state park system to do it," Werndli said. "Forty-seven percent of our workforce is volunteers. The full-time equivalent of those free hours is 505 full-time positions. That's like a third of our employees. We couldn't operate without them."

Volunteers free up rangers to do other things, said Peter Krulder, manager of Honeymoon Island State Park at Dunedin.

"Some volunteers have incredible skills," Krulder said. "Some lead interpretive tours. Others do carpentry while some perform maintenance and trail work. They clean bathrooms and keep the place tidy. I have a couple of volunteers right now repairing windowsills.

"Each park utilizes their volunteers in a different way," he said. "But all the volunteers seem to develop a sense of ownership once they arrive at a park."

Many state and federal agencies have information about volunteer programs posted on their Web sites. Often the help-wanted message is spread word-of-mouth across campfires, along mountain trails, or at travel and outdoors shows.

Florida's welcoming winter climate and beaches account for much of the volunteer interest. But many people show up simply because they want something interesting to do or like the company.

"It's about the wildlife and meeting like-minded people," said Bill Waddell, from Montreal. "It's a taste of the real Florida."

"What a joy it is to volunteer and meet other people like us," said Anderson, who on the day a reporter visited Honeymoon Island was busily tracing a pattern onto a piece of canvas for a new park awning. "We feel as though we've really been welcomed by the staff. We're not made to feel like part of a caste system."

Florida has waiting lists for volunteer jobs at some parks. At Alaska's Denali, it can be hard to find volunteers with the necessary mountaineering skills. They must be proficient in emergency medicine, glacier travel, ice climbing, and crevasse, helicopter and high-altitude rope rescue, said Daryl Miller, the park's South District Ranger.

"That's a pretty high skill set," he said. "Most have a very accomplished climbing resume."

Mountaineering patrols at Denali often work 16 to 18 hours a day for 30 days assisting climbing teams on the 20,320-foot Mount McKinley, North America's highest peak.

"In 2002, 38 volunteers joined National Park Service mountaineering rangers on patrols and donated over 9,000 hours of their precious time," Miller said on a nomination form for the Outstanding Volunteer Person (VIP) Service. "They were tasked with many jobs including protecting Mount McKinley from the illegal deposit of human waste and trash... .

"They provided an invaluable visitor service by assisting with more than 21 search and rescue operations and medical emergencies on the mountain which saved several lives and helped many others in descending the mountain out of harm's way."

But volunteers gain as well as give. "Job satisfaction from working on the mountain," Miller said. "More climbing experience."

Grissom, who volunteered every spring from 1992 to 1998, was able to research the treatment of acute mountain sickness.

"I published several studies on high altitude illness from studies I did while a VIP, and the experience with mountain rescues helps in supervising our medical helicopter program in the state of Utah, where we often are asked to provide support for search and rescue operations," he said.

Most parks provide "volunteer villages," campsites or boat slips in exchange for work.

Anderson said she prefers day parks to campgrounds because no one else is around after hours.

"The only people left here at night are us," she said. "We're in our own little gated community. We have some privacy, our own special piece of ground. And it often comes with the best view that Florida has to offer."

Comments (3) >>

Owen said:

Unless we get a totally new Administration in power and unless we get the American public to demand professionalism in the management of our parks, I see no hope in hell of the tax base being raised in order to support NPS operations...

October 05, 2006

Scott replies to Owen said:

The solution is to resist and to bring about the change one wants. The solution is avoid, at all costs, becoming a Quisling or a Chamberlain. We will NEVER get the change we want so long as we continue to facilitate the success of the power-base we oppose in our hearts. If we do not offer OPPOSITION, we do accomplish nothing. If we do not offer ACTIVE OPPOSITION, we become part of the problem. Throughout history that concept has been stated and restated over and over and over again. Pasted below are a few of my favorite quotes which, I hope, will provide a satisfactory answer to your question. Scott "Non-cooperation with evil is as much a responsibility as cooperation with good." -Gandhi 'Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?' --Henry D. Thoreau The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people - US Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis "To sin by silence when they should cry out makes cowards out of men." -Abraham Lincoln Neither the clamor of the mob nor the voice of power will ever turn me by the breadth of a hair from the course I mark out for myself guided by such knowledge as I can obtain and directed by a solemn conviction of right and duty. -Robert M. La Follette "Our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our cases before the conscience of the local, national, (and the international) community. -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop." -Mario Savio Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. -Benjamin Disraeli Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. -Edmund Burke All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing. -Edmund Burke The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing. -Albert Einstein It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable. -Moliere "We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." -Martin Luther King Jr. There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the establishment -- and nothing more corrupting. -Alan John Percivale Taylor Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph. -Haile Selassie "We will remember not the words of our natural enemies, but the unforced capitulations of our former friends." -Scott Silver Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will. -Frederick Douglass "..it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.." -Samuel Adams Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. -Margaret Mead "The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in time of great moral crisis." -Dante Alighieri, "Resist much, obey little." -Walt Whitman "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light." -Dylan Thomas "Revolutionary consciousness is to be found among the most ruthlessly exploited masses: animals, trees, water, air, grasses" -Gary Snyder

October 05, 2006

Bill said:

"The organizing principle of this paper is one of ascending radicalism from reform through volunteerism and privatization of services to the outright abolition of public ownership and the transfer of the parks to private parties." - James P. Beckwith, Jr., 1981.

October 06, 2006

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