Another reason Arlo made a good career move. What a dilemma this would have been!

Forest Rangers Report Growing Job Dangers
By MATTHEW DALY (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
June 25, 2006 10:16 AM EDT
WASHINGTON - For the nation's forest rangers, the serenity of the woods increasingly is giving way to confrontations with unruly visitors.

Attacks, threats and lesser altercations involving Forest Service workers reached an all-time high last year, according to government documents obtained by a public employees advocacy group. Incidents ranged from gunshots to stalking and verbal abuse.

The agency tally shows 477 such reports in 2005, compared with 88 logged a year earlier. The total in 2003 was 104; in 1995, it was 34.

Among the more serious incidents, a Forest Service worker was run down by a man in a snowmobile in California's Lake Tahoe Basin Management area. The man pleaded guilty to assault with a deadly weapon.

Also, Forest Service workers were shot at while trying to confiscate a marijuana plantation in California's Angeles National Forest. Two loaded shotguns and more than 78 kilograms of processed marijuana were seized.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request and provided them to The Associated Press.

The nonprofit environmental advocacy group said the government's methods for collecting the data have not changed over the years. It said some of the blame for the growing violence in the woods is due to greater access to remote lands and waterways by motorized equipment.

"Things like off-road vehicles are taking people into the backcountry to get away from all rules of civilization, and trouble appears to be ensuing," said the group's executive director, Jeff Ruch.

Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who oversees the Forest Service, did not disagree entirely with that assessment. He said Friday that while he had not seen the report and could not confirm its accuracy, it was true that a huge increase in the use of off-highway vehicles had likely contributed to a rise in the number of assaults.

"It doesn't mean the policy is bad or OHV users are bad people," he said.

Forest Service officials also put some of the blame for the growing violence on increasing border enforcement and drug-related activity. They say they suspect public lands have become more popular for marijuana gardens because of the vast remote locations patrolled only intermittently by law enforcement personnel.

Rey said, however, that the group's 2004 report unfairly manipulated Forest Service data to make a political point and it was unfortunate the report seemed to be pitting one kind of forest user against another.

"It doesn't assist law enforcement. It complicates it by singling one group out. That's unfair," Rey said. "Most of the assaults in 2004 were as a result of encounters with drunks, drug users or deranged environmental protesters."

Don Amador, Western representative of the Blue Ribbon Coalition, an Idaho-based group that advocates motorized recreation, took umbrage at what he described as an absurd report.

"To try to lump off-roaders with drug dealers and other ne'er-do-wells is just ridiculous," he said.

Most ATV riders are responsible and use designated trails, Amador said, adding there is no evidence that off-roaders are more violent than any other group that uses national forests.

The only increase in crime in national forests he has seen is the growing presence of pot farmers. "That's my biggest concern. It's a serious issue and it needs to be addressed," Amador said.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility also warned about a steady decline in Forest Service security officers, which the group said is endangering employees and the public. Last year, the group said, there were about 660 rangers, investigators and special agents in the nation's 155 national forests and 20 grasslands - down by nearly one-third from 1993.

The figure translates into one position for every 291,000 acres of forest land in the 192 million acre forest system.

The Forest Service spends less than 2 percent of its total budget on law enforcement, a figure that is lower than other federal land management agencies such as the National Park Service or the Bureau of Land Management, the group said.

Rey said the Forest Service requested a $12 million increase for law enforcement in the budget year that begins Oct. 1, a recognition of the increased crime in national forests.

I recall my "guidance counselor" in high school giving me this "test" called the Kuder Preference Test. It asked you a bunch of questions about what you liked or didn't like to do and would come up with "the answer" of what you ought to do with your life, career-wise. Mine came up "forest ranger". A couple of years after we moved in together, my sweetie (now spouse) and I somehow started talking about dumb ass high school guidance counselors and the subject of the Kuder test came up. Well, she took it as well and her result was a forest ranger, too. We've mentioned it to a bunch of other people in the ensuing years and theirs came up forest rangers! Maybe a lot of people from our generation should have been forest rangers, or maybe they figured that we were all pot smokin' hippies who should be out where it's a growin', or maybe the test just sucked! Did anybody take it and get different results?


Capt'n Zap (Dang! The peace icon's gone again!)

Yah, I did, and got two equal results: forest ranger and science teacher.

Strangely enough, I wanted to be a forest ranger too.In fact in my junior year of high school I visited a college that taught stuff along those lines at the time, Cook College here in N.J. Growing up camping a lot on my own and with the boy scouts and stuff this seemed cool as hell.( well not COOL as hell).
I wonder if Bush took that test in high school for a career preference? Can someone be a professional asshole?

i don't think i ever took that test, but my dad is a retired tree surgeon...he took care of trees! he was an artist, not to mention a 250 lb. trapeze artist!.
also, he showed me how to pull myself up a tree and with all his knot tying skills, it wasn't hard...and i wasn't afraid of going too high (i had me) :)
i watched him make friends with animals. i remember making friends with a neighborhood squirrel to where eventually i could put a peanut in my teeth, half extended, get low to the ground, and the squirrel would take the peanut from my teeth! i could just feel his nose and his breath.
a neighbor saw this and approached me from across the street, looked me straight in the eye, two inches from my face, with his cheshire cat grin and said, "you're nuts!" and i said, " you're nuts!" so i guess we were even. :)