Michigan Ag Connection - State Park Rangers Wear Many Hats

Michigan Ag News Headlines

State Park Rangers Wear Many Hats
By: Bob Gwizdz, Michigan Department of Natural Resources - 03/19/2018

Two days of high winds -- followed by a day-long, sometimes intense rain -- completely changed Scott Slavin's plans.

The unit manager for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources' William Mitchell State Park and the White Pine Trail in Wexford County, Slavin thought the snowshoe/fat-tire bicycle portion of the trail could use a good grooming.

But the rain wiped out most of the snow, so Slavin shifted gears. Instead, he decided he'd spend the morning checking for fallen trees at a couple of nearby state forest campgrounds.

Slavin -- who was working alone, as the rest of the staff at his headquarters at Mitchell State Park was either on vacation or seasonal lay-off -- loaded a chain saw into the back of his truck and headed out.

He checked a couple of state forest campgrounds and there were no fallen trees on the roads. Still, there were several standing dead trees that had been deemed hazardous -- including some hardwoods that had succumbed to oak wilt -- and Slavin figured, as long as I'm out here...

He cut down a few of the oaks that needed to be removed before spring camping season gets underway. For Slavin, it's all in a day's work. There's no such thing as a typical day, he said.

"You can go from working on bathroom plumbing to writing a ticket to arresting someone to cutting a tree down," he said. "I've had those days before."

Slavin, who worked for seven years as a park ranger prior to becoming a unit manager, is commissioned as a peace officer. He said most of his arrests occurred when he worked in southeastern Michigan earlier in his career.

"Most of the time it's people who have (outstanding) warrants," he said. "If you're writing them a citation for something and you call in and see that they have a warrant, you hold them until the police department can come get them. When I worked in southern Michigan it happened quite often."

Slavin said that about half of a 'typical day' during spring, summer and fall involves interacting with the public -- everything from answering telephone calls to solving problems at campgrounds.

"Dealing with health and safety issues is our No. 1 priority," he said. "If we get storms or there's a damaged facility -- like an unsafe boat dock -- we get right on it. And we do interpretive programs as well."

During the winter, Slavin said a lot of his work involves long-term planning and meeting with workers to make sure the work gets done.

"My job changes a lot."

As do those of other park rangers.

"A park ranger is a lot of things in our system," said Ron Olson, chief of the DNR's Parks and Recreation Division. "They're law enforcement, they're customer service representatives, they are maintenance and operations staff.

"As one of our district supervisors says, 'they're the Yellow Pages of doers.'"

The DNR has a total of 325 park rangers, 87 full-timers and 238 part-time or seasonal rangers.

Other Michigan Headlines