A new campfire song: Help! (National Park Service Rangers Fed Up)

http://www.latimes.com/features/outdoors/la-os-newfamily6apr06,1,5439956,print.story

Ed Forner is 8,000 feet above the vast, sunburned desert. Stomach-dropping mountain ranges unfurl outside the tiny plane's cockpit, each more spectacular than the last: Panamint, Inyo, Last Chance, Sierra.

But the pilot's not really looking. Sometimes he can't see the wild landscape he's charged with protecting for the roadblocks that Washington keeps throwing in his way, he says. "All I see are stop signs!" he shouts over the engine's whine.

Forner has been a National Park Service ranger for 29 years. He loves his work, considers it a privilege to serve both the public and the land. But he is fed up. And he's not alone.

Millions of visitors a year hear friendly rangers banter about prehistory at Agate Fossil Beds National Monument in Nebraska or geology at Utah's Zion National Park. The crisp green and gray uniforms declare that all is right in this nationwide realm of 387 taxpayer-financed battlefields, cemeteries, ruins, seashores, parkways, preserves, scenic rivers, trails and parks. Out of earshot, however, many employees complain about slashed budgets and staffs, and say they fear recrimination if they don't toe the line.