What I Wish Every Park Visitor Knew — Stewardship, Rules & Real Ranger Advice

Most park visitors want to do the right thing. But wanting to and knowing how aren’t always the same.
 
In this episode, host Mark Tezel — Ranger PamPaw — delivers the practical, honest advice that rangers wish they could give every visitor: what Leave No Trace actually means beyond the slogan, the real stories behind the rules that seem arbitrary, and why some of the most obvious-seeming rules are the hardest to enforce.
 
You’ll hear about the three visitor behaviors rangers deal with most — the wildlife selfie, the trail shortcut, and the feeding of wildlife — and what rangers genuinely understand about why they happen. You’ll also learn how visitors can actively help parks survive, and what Ranger PamPaw truly wishes he could say to every person who walks through the gate.
 
This is Episode 5 of Season 1 — the episode where Ranger PamPaw has earned the right to give some real advice. And he does.
 
Ranger PamPaw Podcast is hosted by Mark Tezel — known to his grandkids as Ranger PamPaw — after nearly four decades with the National Park Service. New episodes drop every other Wednesday.

Part of the Tezels on the Road family. 

www.tezelsontheroad.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

You made it. You planned the trip, packed a car, drove maybe for hours, and now you're at the entrance to a national park. One of the best decisions you'll make all year. Here's what I want you to know before you do anything else. Most visitors are good. Most people who come to a national park generally want to do the right thing. They want to respect the place, they want to leave it the way they found it, and the overwhelming majority of them do exactly that. But here is what else I know. After nearly four decades watching people interact with these places, wanting to do the right thing and knowing what the right thing is are not always the same. So today we're going to close that gap. Not with a list of rules, not with a lecture, but with the honest, practical, earned wisdom of someone who has spent a career watching what works and what does not, and what visitors almost never hear, but probably should. I'm Mark Tetzel, Ranger Pampaw, and this is what I wish every park visitor knew. If you've spent any time in the national parks or really any public land, you have heard the phrase leave no trace. It's printed on signs, stamped on brochures, and repeated so often that it almost becomes background noise, which is in a way the problem. When something becomes a slogan, people stop thinking about what it actually means. So let's think about what it actually means. Leave No Trace is built on seven principles. And while all of them matter, a few of them account for almost everything a ranger has to address on any given day. So let's start with plan ahead and prepare. This one comes first for a reason. Most of the problems rangers deal with, unprepared hikers in a difficult condition, people who run out of water, visitors who attempted trails well beyond their ability, trace back to this single principle. Knowing where you're going, what the terrain looks like, and what conditions you may encounter is not optional. It is the foundation of a safe visit. Stay on designated trails. This is the one that frustrates rangers the most because the reasoning seems so obvious and yet the behavior persists. Every time someone cuts a switchback, steps off a marked path to get a better photo, or pushes through vegetation to reach a viewpoint, they are causing more damage that can that compounds over time. One footstep off trail is rarely visible. Ten thousand footsteps create a scar. A hundred thousand footsteps create a problem that takes decades to repair. Take only memories and leave only footprints. Except even footprints off trail are too much. Nothing leaves with you that did not arrive with you. Not a rock, not a flower, not a small piece of petrified wood from petrified forest national park. The park estimates that if every visitor took just one small piece of petrified wood each year, the entire resource would be depleted within decades. Dispose of waste properly. Pack it in and pack it out. This applies to everything food wrappers, apple cores, orange peels, and it especially applies to human waste in backcountry areas. This is not squeamishness, it's resource protection. Leave what you find. Cultural artifacts, natural objects, wildlife. Let them be. An arrowhead lying in the ground is a piece of the historical record. Archaeologists and NPS resource managers talk about provenience, the precise documented location where an artifact was found. The context is often more scientifically valuable than the object itself. The moment that artifact moves, the record is gone. Minimize campfire impact. In many parks today, fire restrictions are in place much of the year, not because rangers do not appreciate a good campfire, but because the fire behavior in an arid and fire prone landscape has changed. Pay attention to posted restrictions. They exist because someone has already seen what happens when they're ignored. Respect wildlife. More on this in a moment, but the short version, distance matters more than you think. These principles are not bureaucratic requirements. They are the practicable result of watching what happens when they are not followed. Every one of them was written in response to actual behavior in actual parks. Keep that in mind the next time one of them feels inconvenient. That context matters because when you understand why a rule exists, it stops feeling like an obstacle and starts feeling like information. Take the wildlife distance rules. Most parks with large mammals, bison, bears, elk, moose, post minimum approach distances. 25 yards for a bison and elk in Yellowstone. A hundred yards for bears. These numbers do not come out of thin air. They came from incident reports. They came from hospitalization records. They came from watching again and again what happens when people assume that a calm looking animal is a safe animal. Bison are the most dangerous animals in Yellowstone, not grizzly bears. They injure more visitors per year than any other species in the park. They look slow, they are not slow. They weigh up to 2,000 pounds and can outrun a horse over short distances. The rule exists because people were seriously injured or killed before it was written. I can offer a more personal example. At San Antonio Missions, I cannot tell you how many times I had to remind visitors to stay off the historic mission walls. I understand the impulse. Honestly, I do. Before the park was even established, I have to admit I climbed those walls as a child. But what it looks like, harmless curiosity from one visitor multiplies quickly. San Antonio missions recorded over 1.5 million visitors in 2025. If even a small fraction of those visitors climbed the walls, the damage would accumulate at a pace that preservation work simply cannot keep up with. The rule is not about suspicion, it's about mathematics. And take the drone restrictions. Drones are now prohibited in most national parks, not because rangers are hostile to technology, but because of what happened before the restriction existed. Drones disrupted wildlife, flushed nesting birds, frightened visitors, and in at least one case caused a panic out of a crowded overlook. The rule was not written in advance of the problem. It was written in response to one. And I'm not sharing these stories to frighten anyone. I am sharing them because visitors deserve the real explanation, not just the prohibition. Most of the time, the sign does not have room to tell you the story, but the story is there. And if you think about what a park is protecting and what it's already experienced, most of the rules will help make immediate sense without needing to be explained at all. There is a category of park rules that rangers spend a disproportionate amount of their time on. And it's not dramatic stuff. It's not poaching or vandalism or serious crimes. Those exist, but they are not really the daily reality. The rules rangers repeat most often are the ones that collide with normal, understandable human behavior. The rules that feel to visitors like they are getting in the way of something wonderful. The wildlife selfie. This is the single most common safety issue that parks with large dangerous wildlife. The visitor sees an animal, a bison, a bear, an elk, and they want a photo, a real photo, not one of where the animal's small brown shape in the distance. I understand this completely. I'm a visitor too. The instinct is real and social media has made it worse because now there is a reward. Likes, shares, attention attached to that close encounter. But the ranger watching from 50 yards away knows something the visitor is not feeling the moment. The distance is the protection. The animal is not posing, it is not tolerating you, and the moment you cross from tolerated visitor to perceived threat, the behavior can change faster than any human can react. Social media creates a related problem worth naming directly. When a specific viewpoint or trail goes viral because someone's photo looked extraordinary, every person who sees that post wants that same image. The trail that could accommodate a few hundred visitors a day suddenly has thousands. Angel's Landing in Zion National Park is a useful example. A generally extreme trail with narrow sections and precipitous drop-offs that draw visitors well beyond their skill level, in part because of the photos are stunning. Overcrowding increases danger for everyone, strains park staff, and damages the resource that people came to see. The shortcut. We've already talked about staying on trails, but this one is worth revisiting because the hardest version of this rule to enforce is not someone ignoring it deliberately, is someone who generally does not see the harm. I'm just stepping off for a second. The trail is right there, I'm barely off it. I just want to see what is over this small rise. The problem is that every single person who has contributed to a damaged viewpoint says something similar. The cumulative impact is invisible to any one person making any one decision, and that is exactly what makes it so hard. The feeding of wildlife. This one carries a particular kind of emotional pressure because the behavior often comes from a place of genuine kindness. The squirrel looks hungry, the deer looks tame, the bird is right there on the picnic table looking directly at you. Feeding wildlife changes them. Not as a metaphor, as a documented behavioral shift. Animals that associate humans with food become habituated. Habituated animals become bold. Bold animals become problems. And when an animal becomes a problem in a national park, the options are not good. Rangers do not want to relocate wildlife. They do not want to euthanize wildlife. But a habituated animal that has lost his fear of humans cannot be rehabilitated. A fan animal is a dead animal. It's not a slogan, it's a description of what actually happens. I tell you all this not to make you feel watched or policed. I tell you because these are the moments where the best intention visitors sometimes cause the most harm. And knowing that, really knowing it, makes it possible to make different choices. Do not approach wildlife, do not leave the trail, do not take the rocks home. All that is important, but it's only half the story. The other half is this visitors can make a real meaningful difference in the health of a national park. Not in a vague, feel-good way, but specifically, practically, and sometimes dramatically. The most direct thing, use the programs the park has already set up. Volunteer days, trail restoration events, citizen science projects, invasive species removal initiatives. Most parks have them, and most of them are chronically understaffed. When you show up for a morning of volunteer work at a park you love, you're not just helping. You are providing labor that the MPS budget cannot always fund. Report what you see. Rangers cannot be everywhere. Visitors are everywhere. If you see someone feeding wildlife, tell a ranger. If you notice a trail marker that has been knocked down, report it at the visitor center. If you observe someone taking something they should not take, a plant, a rock, a cultural artifact, say something to the staff. You don't have to confront anyone, just tell a ranger. That information matters. And tell accurate stories. This one sounds small, but it's not. The national parks depend on public support, political support, funding support, the kind of goodwill that translates into appropriations protection from development pressure. When you share your experience in a person on social media to your family, the story you tell shapes how other people see these places. A thoughtful, specific story does more of a for a park than a hundred generic, beautiful place post. Take part in a junior ranger program. I was part of developing the original junior ranger program at San Antonio Missions, and I can tell you it makes a real difference. Not just for the young participants, but for the park itself. Junior Rangers learn why the rules exist and they become genuine eyes and ears for the resource. If you're visiting with the children, this program is worth your time. If you're a child at heart, it's still worth your time. Buy the sticker. I mean this seriously. The Eastern National Association, the Western National Parks Association, and similar part nonprofit park partners generate revenue that goes directly back into the parks, into exhibits, educational programs, and publications that the MPS operating budget does not always cover. The bookstore in the visitor center is not a convenience shop, it's a funding mechanism. And finally, come back. One visit is wonderful. Multiple visits over a lifetime is a relationship. People who visit parks repeatedly develop the kind of connection to a place that turns into advocacy, into donations, into the kind of citizenship that parks need to survive. A visitor asks a question, a ranger answers it, the correct professional visitor services appropriate answer, and the ranger moves on because there are other visitors, other questions, other things to do. But sometimes, and I think most rangers know exactly what I'm talking about, there is a longer answer, the one that does not fit in 90 seconds at the visitor center desk. So here are some of them. The park you are visiting today is not the same park it was 50 years ago. Parks change, glaciers recede, species populations shift, fire cycles alter the landscape. The boardwalk that existed the last time you visited may have been rerouted because the resource beneath it changed. The ranger who seems to be enforcing new rules may simply be describing the current condition of a place that is no longer what it was. This is not cause for despair, it is cause for paying attention. The rangers you meet are not volunteers. This surprises people more than it should. The MPS is a federal agency, and the people who work in it, including the seasonal rangers who staff visitor centers during peak visitor season, are paid federal employees. They have gone through training, past evaluations, and in many cases have given up more lucrative careers because this work matters to them. Treat them accordingly. Your children are watching how you behave. I've seen this play out a hundred times. A parent who respects the trail, who steps back from the wildlife, who needs reads the interpretive sign out loud, their child internalized that behavior. A parent who pushes past the barrier because they want that photo, their child internalizes that too. The next generation of park visitors and the next generation of park stewards is being farmed right now on your trip by what you model. The park is not going to last forever on its own. The National Park Service does not operate on unlimited resources. The parks you love exist because people, visitors, advocates, members of Congress, and yes, rangers, chose to protect them. That choice has to keep getting made. Let your elected officials know that you value these places. The parks do not protect themselves. And finally, the one I probably say most often in some form or another to every group I have ever worked with, slow down. The most common mistake people make in national parks is treating them like a checklist. See the geyser, photograph the canyon, drive through the forest, check the box. I understand the impulse. There's a lot to see and time is limited. But the visitor who gets the most out of a park are the ones who slow down enough to actually be there. The ones who sit on a rock and listen. The ones who watch a bird for five minutes without needing to do something. The ones who let the place teach them something instead of just confirming what they already expected to see. That is what I wish I could tell every person who arrives at a park. Stewardship is a word that gets used a lot around national parks. It's a word I've used a lot in this episode, but I want to say plainly what it means because I think it sometimes gets abstracted into something that sounds like someone else's job. Stewardship means that you are responsible for this place while you're in it. Not the Park Service, not the government, you. Every decision you make, every trail you stay on, every distance you maintain from wildlife, every piece of trash you pack out is an act of stewardship or the absence of one. The national parks were designed to belong to everyone. That is their great democratic promise. And what makes that promise work, what makes it possible for a place to belong to everyone generation after generation, is that every person who visits chooses to take care of it. You do not have to be a ranger to do that. You do not have to know the seven principles of leave no trace by heart, or understand a federal job classification system, or have any idea what an asechia is. You just have to show up with the intention of leaving the place better than you found it, or at the very least, no worse. That is all I've ever asked of the visitors I worked with. And is ultimately enough. Thank you for spending this time with me. If this episode shifted something in how you think about visiting parks, even something small, I would genuinely love to hear about it. Leave a comment, send a message, or share the episode with someone who is planning a park trip. Next time we're going to go a little deeper into the stories, the moment from a ranger's career that did not make it into any brochure and probably never will. That is episode 6 Stories They Don't Put on the Signs. I'm Ranger Pampall, until Well then stay curious, stay respectful, and take care of the parts that take care of all of us. Bye, everybody.