How To Get A Job In The National Park Service

The National Park Service (NPS) is a massive federal agency that includes no less than 400 national parks and a workforce of more than 28,000 employees (and that'southward not counting the more than than ii one thousand thousand volunteers).

The NPS workforce encompasses a broad array of professionals, all of whom are instrumental for ensuring that this agency's mission is fulfilled. While some NPS professionals, such equally park rangers and park guides, serve as highly visible members of this federal agency's team, there are just as many (if not more) professionals, from archeologists to biologists and beyond, who are merely as vital to the success of the NPS.

Although the following occupations are only a sampling of the NPS' diverse workforce, they do highlight the many career paths available through the National Park Service:

Education Specialist

Pedagogy specialists oversee and coordinate NPS pedagogy programs, manage the logistics of visiting school groups, provide educational programming, and assist with volunteers, interns, and seasonal staff with the Education Programme. Education specialists also research, write and implement interdisciplinary curriculum near the national park and ensure that the programs come across district, state and national teaching standards, besides as the standards of the National Park Service.

Educational programs instituted by the pedagogy specialists of the NPA may include everything from guided walks and hikes and park publications to classroom programs and web-based material, merely to name a few.

Park Ranger (Interpretation)

Park rangers in an interpretation chapters are involved with the park's day-to-twenty-four hour period operations. They may assist visitors with disabilities, and they may assist with visitor programs, educational programs, and recreational programs. Further, estimation park rangers are oftentimes stationed at visitor contact stations, where they provide guided tours, interpretation, visitor services, and fifty-fifty crowd management.

Depending on the national park and its facilities and features, interpretation park rangers often:

Provide field and h2o-based educational and recreational programming
Provide formal or informal interpretative programs, including orientation talks
Provide historically or naturally themed educational programs for a number of audiences and groups

General Park Ranger

General park rangers with the NPS are responsible for supporting the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment and education of park visitors.

General park rangers may be chosen upon to provide both estimation and protection services, depending on the specific needs of the national park in which they work. As such, general park rangers may do everything from assistance visitors with park resource and provide emergency medical services to patrol the park and enforce park rules and regulations.

Park Ranger (Protection and Law Enforcement)

Protection park rangers with the National Park Service are certified law enforcement officers who are responsible for enforcing all applicable federal laws, rules and regulations of the NPS, too equally those specific to the state in which the park is located. The work of protection park rangers involves ensuring the protection and safety employ of park resources. Their job duties often include apprehending individuals suspected of violating these laws.

Protection park rangers with the NPS, in improver to their police enforcement duties, may provide natural/cultural resource management services, emergency medical services, as well every bit rescue and extraction services.

Park Guide

Park guides are uniformed employees of the NPS who present guided walks and tour talks relating to the cultural, natural and historical areas of interest within national parks.

Their piece of work involves:

Profitable with the park's interpretive programs and projects
Working at the park visitor middle
Building, rebuilding or maintaining trails and other access areas
Performing roving interpretive patrols throughout the park

NPS park guides spend their solar day providing information on current park events, projects, and policies, and are on hand to greet visitors and answer questions.

Wildland Firefighter

National Park Service wildland firefighters are members of fire crews and are therefore responsible for performing work associated with:

Firefighting
Burn down suppression and fuels management
Backfire and burnout
Mobile and stationery engine assault
Helitack operations
Hover hookups

Specialized assignments for NPS wildland firefighters may include tree falling, backlash, and exhaustion operations.

Visual Information Specialist

Visual information specialists with the National Park Service are responsible for creating visual projects and content related to the national park website, to interpretation and educational programs. The visual displays are then shown in visitor information publications, and at exhibits in company centers. Their piece of work involves evaluating audio, video, interactive, and user-generated emerging technologies to meet visitor experience goals and park outreach and public communications objectives.

These professionals contain technology into the park's outreach, visibility, and marketing tools, and they plan, create, pattern and coordinate programs designed to develop and enhance the national park'due south presence.

Physical Science Technician

Physical science technicians assist in the collection, direction, analysis, and interpretation of concrete science information inside national parks. These NPS professionals conduct a wide variety of field and role duties related to topics such as:

Landslide risk assessment
Geomorphology monitoring
Paleontology research and outreach activities
Geological and ecology measurements
Managing and retrieving information from ecology monitoring equipment like weather stations and remote cameras

Archeologist

National Park Service archeologists carry out a range of duties related to the cultural and archeological resources of a national park. The work of archeologists involves conducting status assessments of specific sites and features and ensuring that site recording procedures and tasks, such equally the preparation of archeological survey records, are completed in a timely manner.

NPS archeologists often brand meaning contributions to the preparation of historic preservation documentation, and their piece of work involves assisting in the analysis, conservation, and curation of artifacts according to NPS and professional person standards.

Biology Technician

Biology technicians, who work under NPS natural resource programme managers, carry both field and office work in the areas of biological monitoring, community-based volunteer programs, and natural resource information, among others.

Much of the work of NPS biological science technicians involves collecting and organizing field information and ensuring the adequate quality control of the collected information. Therefore, their job duties include:

Testing of collected samples
Recording of all data nerveless
Evaluation of observed conditions
Preparation of reports, plans, and guidelines

Biologist

National Park Service biologists may perform a wide array of tasks and oversee a broad array of programs within the National Park System. Their work generally involves monitoring park ecosystems so as to understand their electric current condition and to better monitor trends in their status.

Museum Technician

Museum technicians support exhibition and curatorial operations of the NPS. This may include:

Designing, fabricating, and installing exhibits
Maintaining collections databases for research and exhibition
Providing piece of work in support of exhibitions, which may include inspections, curatorial cleaning, maintenance, and repair

Museum technicians also support interpretive plan operations, conduct original research, and present both formal and informal interpretive programs and demonstrations.