Let’s celebrate our park rangers this World Ranger Day

This Sun­day 31 July is World Ranger Day, a day cel­e­brat­ed world­wide that gives us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to thank rangers and cel­e­brate the work that they do to pro­tect the planet’s nat­ur­al trea­sures and cul­tur­al heritage. 

No two days are the same for a park ranger. They are con­tin­u­ous­ly piv­ot­ing their atten­tion to dif­fer­ent tasks so that vis­i­tors enjoy their time in parks and our wildlife and their habi­tats are protected.

Rangers take on every­thing from aer­i­al oper­a­tions to con­struc­tion, wildlife sur­veys, school pre­sen­ta­tions, infra­struc­ture main­te­nance, clean­ing vis­i­tor facil­i­ties, speak­ing to media and much more. Here’s more infor­ma­tion on just a few of their tasks: 

1. Fire­fight­er

Fire man­age­ment is an impor­tant part of a ranger’s duties. They pro­vide emer­gency response dur­ing the fire sea­son to help bat­tle bush­fires, sup­port inter­state crews dur­ing bush­fires and con­duct pre­scribed burn­ing on pub­lic and pri­vate land to reduce fire fuels across the land­scape, man­age native veg­e­ta­tion and pro­tect bio­di­ver­si­ty in South Aus­trali­a’s parks and reserves.

2. Com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment officer 

Our rangers love to share the val­ue of parks with vis­i­tors and pro­mote all the great things that the Nation­al Parks and Wildlife Ser­vice does for our parks and reserves. 

Whether it’s at a school pre­sen­ta­tion, a guid­ed walk, Park of the Month event or cre­at­ing an edu­ca­tion­al resource, our rangers always ensure our parks enthu­si­asts go away with a wealth of knowl­edge and become advo­cates for our parks and places. 

3. Vol­un­teer coordinator 

We’re for­tu­nate that our park rangers have sup­port from peo­ple who are just as pas­sion­ate about our nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment as they are. From vol­un­teer rangers to camp­ground hosts, friends of parks groups, indi­vid­ual vol­un­teers and work expe­ri­ence stu­dents, there are many peo­ple assist­ing in our parks. 

Rangers often coor­di­nate all of these groups and indi­vid­u­als, which can involve man­ag­ing ros­ters and ensur­ing that vol­un­teers have what they need to car­ry out their tasks with­in parks.

Find out how you can vol­un­teer with Nation­al Parks and Wildlife Ser­vice.

4. Ecol­o­gist

Many park rangers also have a strong pas­sion for ecol­o­gy. They are often found mon­i­tor­ing the diverse wildlife in parks and con­duct­ing sur­veys to allow them to con­tin­ue to learn and under­stand more about the res­i­dents that call parks home.

If you ever see a park ranger out and about and you’ve got a ques­tion about the wildlife in a park, be sure to stop and ask them. They will glad­ly help you iden­ti­fy what some­thing is, or leave you with some inter­est­ing facts you may not have known. 

For more infor­ma­tion about World Ranger Day, ways you can sup­port rangers and how to have an impact on con­ser­va­tion around the world vis­it The Thin Green Lineweb­site.