Servicewide News
Threat Level Raised to Orange
The national threat level has been raised from "Elevated" to "High" (Level Orange). Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge issued the following statement:
The Department of Homeland Security in consultation with the Homeland
Security Council, has made the decision to raise the national threat
level from an Elevated to High risk of terrorist attack or Level Orange.
The U.S. Intelligence Community believes that Al Qaida has entered an
operational period worldwide, and this may include attacks in the United
States.
INCIDENTS
George Washington Memorial Parkway (MD)
Parkway Closed Due To Bomb Threat
On the morning of May 19th, a truck driver who was heading south on
the inner loop of the beltway around Washington stopped to get a soft
drink. When he got back onto the beltway, two men in a car next to him
yelled that someone had placed explosives on his truck while he had made
the stop. He was also told that the truck would blow up the next time he
stopped the vehicle. The truck driver called 911 and advised dispatchers
of the threat. Virginia state troopers got in front of and behind the
truck and escorted it down the highway, then called the Park Police, who
cleared a way down the parkway to an area where the truck could be
safely parked. The driver pulled to a halt in the parkway's eastbound
lanes and ran from the truck. Bomb squads from the Virginia State Police
and Park Police and investigators from ATF and the Joint Terrorism Task
Force investigated, but found no explosives in the truck. The parkway
was shutdown around Route 123 just before noon and reopened at 3 p.m.
Media reports picked up on the obvious parallel with the movie
Speed. See the following web site: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12700-2003May19.
html
[Submitted by Jacqueline F.C. Davis, Education
Specialist]
Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore (IN)
Poaching Conviction
On May 16th, R.L., 30, of Bridgeman, Michigan, pled
guilty in magistrate's court to unauthorized taking of wildlife (deer),
use of a firearm, feeding wildlife, and destruction of plants. He was
fined a total of $3,250, banned from the park for five years, and
ordered to forfeit a "deer cam" camouflaged camera to the government.
Last November, rangers found two locations where deer were being baited
with corn. Also found were empty corn bags, folding chairs, a hunting
blind constructed from nearby small trees, and evidence that a vacant,
park-owned house in a nearby isolated location was being used as a
second hunting site. Surveillance of the site led to the identification
of a suspicious vehicle registered to R.L. Of special note was the
discovery of a motion activated "deer cam" located along a deer trail
leading to one of the feeding sites. The film from the camera was
removed and replaced and the camera was returned to its prior location.
Photos of deer and a rear view picture of a man were on the film.
R.L. was found to have two convictions in Michigan for destruction
of plants and trees and illegal taking of an antlerless deer. He was
contacted by case ranger Rich Eshenaur and agreed to come in for an
interview. Eshenaur was able to obtain a full, taped confession to the
noted violations. R.L. was also charged with littering and
trespassing for entering the posted, vacant house. The latter two
charges were dismissed in a plea agreement between the US Attorney's
Office and R.L.'s attorney. During the interview, R.L. said he
set up a second deer cam as counter-surveillance, as he knew rangers had
been at his hunting sites. R.L. later claimed that this second
camera was stolen. He said that he was fined $1,000 for poaching the
deer in Michigan and that he didn't think it was much of a fine. The
latter two statements by R.L. were used to request the fines levied
in this case, which are the highest fines ever received in a poaching
case at Indiana Dunes. A Lacey Act violation and search warrant were
considered in this case, but various issues precluded such action.
Several other rangers assisted with the case; special agents assisted in
the interview and case presentation to the US Attorney's Office.
[Submitted by J.D. Swed, Chief Ranger]
FIRE MANAGEMENT
National Interagency Fire Center
NIFC Situation Report - Wednesday, May 21, 2003
FPreparedness Level 2
There were 106 newly-reported fires yesterday. Two continue to burn. A Type 2 team has been assigned to the Round Fire in the Coconino NF, which is burning in mixed conifer and chaparral eight miles northwest of Sedona, Arizona.
Fire Danger
| State |
5/16 |
5/17 |
5/18 |
5/19 |
5/20 |
5/21 |
| Arizona |
VX |
VX |
VX |
VX |
VX |
VX |
| Minnesota |
VX |
VX |
VX |
VX |
VX |
-- |
| New Mexico |
VX |
VX |
VX |
VX |
VX |
VX |
| Oklahoma |
VX |
VX |
VX |
VX |
VX |
-- |
| Texas |
VX |
VX |
VX |
VX |
VX |
-- |
VH — Very high
EX — Extreme
VX — Very high to extreme
Fire Weather Watches and Warnings
No warnings or watches have been posted for today.
National Resource Commitments
| Day |
5/16 |
5/17 |
5/18 |
5/19 |
5/20 |
5/21 |
| Crews |
16 |
26 |
18 |
10 |
7 |
27 |
| Engines |
37 |
48 |
39 |
21 |
27 |
70 |
| Helicopters |
5 |
10 |
7 |
1 |
1 |
10 |
| Air Tankers |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| Overhead |
53 * |
533 |
473 |
460 |
372 |
543 |
* As reported by NIFC.
National Team Commitments
| State |
Type Team |
Team IC |
Fire |
Acres |
Percent Contain |
Est Full Contain |
| AZ |
T2 |
Waldrip |
Round/Coconino NF |
67 |
0% |
UNK |
Park Fire Situation
No reports today.
OPERATIONAL NOTES
NPS History
Ranger: Genesis of an Idea
This June, a new book will be published on National Park Service rangers. The book, entitled National Park Ranger: An Informal History of an American Icon, was written by Butch Farabee and will be published by Roberts Rinehart Publishers (ISBN 1-57098-392-5, $18.95 in paper). Through permission of both the author and publisher, excerpts will appear in the Morning Report and InsideNPS over coming months.
This is the second excerpt from the book; the first appeared on May 15, 2003.
Ranger: Genesis of an Idea
The concept of the Ranger as a "guardian of the land,"goes back five thousand years to Mesopotamian drawings on temple and palace walls. Desert "rangers" patrolled the southern frontier of what is now Egypt, a thousand years later. Between 1100 and 200 BC, "preserve men" in ancient China, Persia, and later in Greece and Rome protected forests, hunting grounds, parks, and sacred groves from the commoners.
Royal forests appeared in medieval Europe as early as 500 AD and foresters served German, Norman, and English aristocrats for the next nine hundred years. The English word "ranger" evolved from the Germanic "ring" or "range" in the early 1300s and then appeared as a title in the English Royal Rolls of the mid-fourteenth century. As trusted officers of the realm, they were appointed to safeguard imperial forests from trespass and wood cutting and to prevent the wild game of the nobility from being poached.
Roving militia guarded the frontiers of the American New World from Indian attack as early as 1629. By 1682, "rangers" in Colonial Virginia were assigned by the House of Burgesses to protect vulnerable settlements along the major rivers. In Colonial South Carolina and Florida, ranger battalions were used in military forays against the Spanish in the 1720s. Elite fighting units like Rogers' Rangers served with distinction in the British Army during the French and Indian Wars. Twenty years later, American ranger units were used against England during the American Revolution. With nearly 350 years of sacrifice and honor, rangers herald a proud tradition in this nation's military to this day.
Following the Revolutionary War, the best known American frontier ranger group was the Texas Rangers. Loosely organized in 1823 by Stephen Austin to fight hostiles while Texans pushed westward, they were authorized by the state in 1835; the celebrated law enforcement branch was formally created in 1874. With missions similar to those trusted officers in Texas, rangers could also be found in Arizona, New Mexico, and California.
The Forest Reserve Act of 1891 created large parcels out of federal western public domain (later called national forests) and seven years later, forest rangers were finally assigned to protect these isolated, wooded mountainous tracts. Forest rangers for the national parks appeared almost simultaneously in 1898 when civilians began to assist the United States Army in guarding Yosemite, Sequoia, and General Grant National Parks.
The earliest known use of the term park ranger occurred in 1901 in the Sequoia National Park Superintendent's Annual Report. In succeeding years it became increasingly more common to call the forest rangers in national parks "park rangers." In a 1904 letter to the Secretary of the Interior, the Acting Superintendent of Sequoia requested an individual on his staff be appointed as a "Deputy Park Ranger." Finally, the title Park Ranger became official in the national parks in California in 1905. "Forest rangers" in these three areas were designated "park rangers" on creation of the United States Forest Service and the resulting simultaneous transfer of these forest reserves out of the Department of the Interior to the new agency's current home, the Department of Agriculture.
As early as 1696, there were caretakers of a park-like area in Maryland and in 1859 men on horseback patrolled New York City's Central Park. It wasn't until the federal government dedicated California's remote Yosemite Valley to the future, however, that the era of the "modern" park ranger began.
Galen Clark: Guardian of Yosemite
On June 30, 1864, a war-weary President Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant Act into law. The United States now had the first "jewel in its crown" of special places. Yosemite Valley and the
nearby Mariposa Grove of Big Trees were placed into the public trust; those sixty square miles granted to the State of California through federal legislation and made a state park at the time were to be the genesis of the national park idea. This was the first area set aside anywhere in the world by the government of a country purely for its scenic value.
On May 21, 1866, Yosemite pioneer Galen Clark was named "Guardian of Yosemite," by a nine member State Commission (of which he was one) and was duly authorized to protect these wondrous areas. Guardian Clark's wages were "not to exceed five hundred dollars per annum," as the first protection officer in this new type of park.
First seeing the splendors of Yosemite in 1855, only four years after Europeans first entered the area, Galen Clark received his appointment at age fifty-two. A widower, he left his five children with relatives when he first moved to California in 1853. Packer, miner, rancher,
road builder, and guide, he was the first non-Indian to see the remote corners of the Mariposa Grove. In addition to being an early homesteader and innkeeper, he was also a regular explorer of nearby Yosemite Valley.
Clark was ideal for the job; interest, dedication, and ardor would eventually earn him the title "Mister Yosemite."
The appointing commissioners spelled out Guardian Clark's duties in an eight-page letter. These instructions would mirror what the men and women of the National Park Service do today.
They — Clark and a Sub-Guardian he immediately appointed by the name of Peter Longhurst — were to protect the area and accommodate the users, an often impossible dichotomy still vexing rangers to this day. The Valley was a "crazy quilt of roads, hotels, cabins, and pastures and pens for cattle, hogs, mules, and horses." State laws then recently enacted to protect the new park were to be strictly enforced by the duo. Trees were not to be cut, fires were to be monitored, building was to be controlled, and what little infrastructure then in existence, such as trails, bridges, and ladders up the cliffs, were to be maintained. They were given authority to "prevent either visitors and settlers from doing anything which would tend to impair the Valley or its surroundings." He would issue leases and business concessions to those early settlers.
Two years after Congress set Yosemite aside in 1864, the California Legislature enacted the first park protection laws. Violations could result in a maximum fine of $500 and imprisonment for up to six months, standard penalties that still exist today. Clark and
Longhurst were required to be "during the season of visitors, at least — always in or about the valley and Big Tree Grove, in order to bring about entire safety and security that wanton damages will not be inflicted."
In 1870, Clark made an arrest — a first within a park — for a felled giant pine tree; found guilty, the men responsible were fined $20 each by a local judge. Clark was even made a special sheriff's deputy in 1875 to help evict a nearby and long-time associate from his home in the Valley.
While he fought fires and protected resources, Clark shared his love and knowledge of the region through education and as a guide. John Muir — a legend in early conservation — was greatly influenced by Clark, whom he called, "the best mountaineer I ever met, and one of the most sincere tree-lovers I ever knew."
Finally, with twenty-two years of loyal and dedicated service on two separate tours (1866-1880 and 1889-1897), he retired in 1897, at age eighty-three. On March 24, 1910, Galen Clark died in his sleep in Oakland, California, and now rests in the cemetery in his beloved Yosemite.
Submission standards for the Morning Report can be found on the left side of the front page of InsideNPS. All reports should be submitted via email to Bill Halainen at Delaware Water Gap NRA, with a copy to your regional office and a copy to Dennis Burnett in Division of Law Enforcement and Emergency Services, WASO.
Prepared by the Division of Law Enforcement and Emergency Services, WASO, with the cooperation and support of Delaware Water Gap NRA.