How to Become a Park Ranger
Looking for a rewarding job where you can support the natural environment and serve the community, while staying active and burning a few calories as well? If so, we have the right career for you. In this article we’ll show you how to become a park ranger to help you decide if this job is the perfect fit.
What Is a Park Ranger?
Park rangers care, protect, and promote the conservation of America's public land. Depending on the organization you work for, assigned location, and specific responsibilities, you might focus on law enforcement services, forestry, wildlife management, administration, public education, or maintenance.
What Do Park Rangers Do?
Each park ranger may perform very different tasks from another so to better answer the question “what do park rangers do?” we must take into consideration particular job types and seniority levels.
If you want to become a park ranger with law enforcement duties, your responsibilities might include:
- patrolling the assigned area by foot, horseback, or vehicle
- performing search and rescue missions
- assisting in cases of wildfire
- issuing citations and writing reports
When you become a park ranger with public education duties, your responsibilities will often include:
- educating visitors on park rules and regulations, history, interesting facts, and statistics
- giving tours to visitors
- preparing exhibits and informational material for the public
- monitoring air and water quality
If you become a park ranger with administrative duties, common responsibilities include:
- updating manuals
- preparing and completing reports, including attendance reports, employee timesheets, and vehicle and equipment usage reports
- maintaining park activity records
If you want to become a park ranger with forestry, wildlife management, or maintenance duties, your responsibilities might include:
- assisting with road and trail maintenance
- identifying, improving, and protecting wetlands, archaeological sites and other sensitive or endangered sites
- managing and protecting natural resources
- performing clean-up work and ensuring standards for cleanliness and sanitation within park areas
Where Do Park Rangers Work?
One of the most interesting facts that we discover when exploring how to become a park ranger is that they work in so many different environments and locations across the country. In fact, while park rangers mainly work in national and state parks, they may also employed on historic trails, for national monuments, recreational areas, natural reserves, lakes, and beaches, historic sites such as battlefields, and even remote mountain posts.
How to Become a Park Ranger
Before diving into the details of how to be a park ranger, you’ll be glad to learn that there are different paths you can follow to get into this career. This is true whether you are interested in how to become a national park ranger or any other type. Most park ranger jobs require or give priority to candidates with a bachelor's degree or higher, but there are also tons of opportunities for individuals with a high school diploma or associate degree, especially with the right experience as well.
Park Ranger Requirements
If your main goal is to find out how to become a national park ranger specifically, know that the National Park Service (NPS) has stricter education requirements compared to other agencies. If you have no prior experience at a GS-4 level job, to become a national park ranger you must hold a bachelor’s degree or higher.
If instead you are interested in the educational requirements for how to become a state park ranger, depending on the state and position, an associate degree or even just a high school diploma might be enough. This is especially true if you have previous job experience in similar roles or if you have taken courses to further your education on certain topics and to develop specific skills that match the most common park ranger qualifications.
Before being hired and becoming a park ranger in any situation, you’ll have to go through a range of pre-employment screening processes, such as background checks, medical examinations, psychological evaluations, and more. Most likely, you’ll also have be trained on the job and complete a course to learn all you need to know to execute your park ranger role, including park regulations and patrolling techniques.
Other common park ranger qualifications include:
- a valid driver’s license
- U.S. citizenship or proof that you are a lawful permanent resident
- an age restriction of 21 years of age or older (though some park ranger roles are open to those 18+)
How Much Do Park Rangers Make?
The average park ranger salary is $39,503 per year within a range of $26,696 to $69,590. However, your park ranger salary will depend on your education, experience, role, the agency you work for, location and scope of your job.
For example, the national park ranger salary follows the federal General Schedule (GS), which features 15 pay grades with ten pay steps in each, or General Law, a derivative of the GS used for law enforcement officers. Most national park rangers are hired at GS-5 and above or GL-5 and above if they are law enforcement rangers.
Use our Salary Tool to get a more precise estimate of what park rangers are paid in your location and compare it with salaries for similar careers you could pursue as well.
How to Find Park Rangers Jobs
We’ve covered all the basics of how to become a park ranger and now it’s time to address what you need to do to find employment as one. Stand out as an attractive candidate by sending an optimized resume to show off your skills and experience along with a convincing cover letter to persuade the agency you are a great fit for the job. Because not all park rangers perform the same duties, edit your resume and cover letter to reflect what’s requested in each job listing.
If you want to see what a job listing for park rangers looks like or feel ready to apply to one or more, check out the park ranger jobs available now.
The top five states with the highest concentration of jobs for park rangers are:
The five U.S. metropolitan areas with the most park ranger jobs are:
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