Rangers keep Park safe, fun for all

By Jessica Stith
of The Daily Times Staff

Providing an enjoyable experience for millions of visitors while protecting the natural and cultural resources of Great Smoky Mountains National Park isn't easy. It requires constant teamwork.

Supervisory Park Ranger Mark Maslona said all divisions of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park Services, along with thousands of hours of hard work from volunteers, keep the park thriving.

Maslona, Cades Cove district supervisor for the resource education division, said the resource education division has three themes.

The first theme is "diversity and abundance," which includes educating and promoting the survival of the diversity of plants and animals in the Park.

The second theme is "continuum of human history." This includes education and preservation of Appalachian history and culture and the history and culture of Native and Euro Americans.

The third theme is to ensure a "refuge for scenic beauty" for the visual and sensory experience of the visitors. Scenic beauties in the park include: mountain ridges, valleys, unspoiled streams and endemic life forms.

He said the themes are part of park service's goal for "resource stewardship."

Park rangers in the resource education division also educate visitors about the "critical issues" of the Park such as conserving exotic plant and animal species in the park, the effects of air pollution and graffiti in park buildings, the upkeep of historical structures, human contact with wildlife and traffic management issues.

Maslona said the resource education division is constantly educating the public about opportunities for them to discover and understand the park. He said rangers educate visitors on how they can assist in resource stewardship.

"They can help us take care of their national park," Maslona said.

But education does not stop with the resource education division. All park employees in every division work together to accomplish the park's goals. Hundreds of volunteers help keep the park running, as well. Other divisions of park services include: administrative, resource and visitor protection, resource management and science and maintenance.

"All of these divisions work together to help us conserve the natural and historical objects in the park, so visitors can enjoy them," Maslona said.

He said it is important to leave these natural and historical objects unimpaired for future visitors of the park. He said he wants his daughter to be able to see the park looking the same as it is now when she grows up.

Through their different duties, employees of all division in the park protects the resources while providing enjoyment.

"And we all do it in different ways," Maslona said.

Members of the maintenance division are constantly maintaining the roads, buildings, rest rooms or anything that needs repaired. The group includes carpenters, electricians and heavy machine operators.

The administrative division is located on U.S. 441, just a mile inside of Gatlinburg, and is there to make sure operations continue to run smoothly in the park.

Just like police

The resource and visitor protection division (R&VP) employs rangers who perform law enforcement functions in the Park. The rangers are fully commissioned in law enforcement, Maslona said.

"Their functions are just like police officers outside the park," Maslona said and added that they have extra functions as park rangers.

The rangers fight crime and deal with traffic issues. They can give citations, make arrests, perform search and rescue operations and most are trained at a higher degree of first aid.

The resource management division deals with all of the functions in the park that "have to do with the natural aspects," Maslona said. The rangers keep inventory and monitor all of the natural resources.

On staff are air quality specialists, plant botanists, wildlife biologists, forestry technicians, fishery biologists, biological science technicians, archaeologists, enthomologists, ecologists, fire ecologists and firefighters -- among others. And several of the rangers in other divisions double as firefighters in an emergency, he said.

"It's a big park, so it's a little more specialized that other smaller parks, he said.

"We try to work very closely as a team. We do our jobs in our division better because of the help of the other divisions."

Maslona said the park is assisted through several partnerships including the Friends of the Smokies, The Institute at Tremont, Great Smoky Mountains Association and Cades Cove Preservation Association.

"And we couldn't do it as efficiently without the huge volunteer staff," he said.

Maslona is supervisor in the Cades Cove district. He has been working in Great Smoky Mountains National Park for about 12 years and has worked as a park ranger in five different parks for 28 years.

He said rangers stay busy managing traffic in Cades Cove, especially between June and December. He said the Cove sees between 1.8 and 2.2 million visitors a year. He said Cades Cove would rank in the top 10 most visited parks in the U.S., if it were a park on its own.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park receives over 9 million visitors per year and is ranked as the number one most visited park in the country.