National Park Week: Yellowstone Uncovered

The What We Do podcast is a new podcast that takes listeners behind the scenes of Yellowstone National Park and shares stories from the people who work there. The team consists of four members who have worked in various national parks before. Yellowstone has about 750 employees and 450 volunteers each year, with a budget of around $40 million from Congress. The park relies on other revenue streams such as entrance fees, commercial tour operators, and philanthropic donations. Yellowstone is known for its wildlife and geothermal features like geysers and hot springs. The park is also rich in history and cultural resources, with 27 tribes having connections to the land. Yellowstone receives about 4.5 million visits annually, contributing to the local economy. The park has over $4 billion worth of infrastructure and has invested over $1.5 billion in improvements since 2020. The park collaborates with tribes, elected officials, nonprofit groups, and other federal agencies. Concession partne From Yellowstone National Park, this is What We Do. Hey everyone and welcome to the What We Do podcast. I'm Jake Frank. Our team of four will be interviewing ten people over the next ten weeks to take you behind the scenes to share stories from people who work for the National Park Service in the world's first national park. So first things first, hi team. Hey Jake. Hey there. How's everybody doing? I'm good. Why don't we do some quick team intros. So if we do, let's say, your name, your title, maybe your division, how long you've been in Yellowstone, what your favorite hobbies are, and maybe if there's any other parks you've worked at. Miles. All right. I'm Miles Barger. I'm the Publications Program Manager here at Yellowstone in the Division of Resource Education and Youth Programs. I've been in Yellowstone for about three years this time around. I worked here earlier in my career as well, and I've also worked at Denali National Park and Black Canyon-Gunnison National Park and at Harper's Ferry Center. You can look that up if you want to know where it is. And you. Yeah. So I'm the newbie here. I've only been in Yellowstone for about two years so far. Before that I was at Shenandoah National Park for 12 years, and I'm the Digital Media Specialist here, which basically deals with the website, social media, the NPS app, and visual exhibits in the visitor centers. Ashton. How long have you been here? Well, Yellowstone is actually my first park, and I've been here for about four years now as a Digital Communication Specialist for the Superintendent's Office. So working on similar types of things as breadth, web, social media, and the like. So what about you, Jake? I'm the old guy here, apparently. I've been here a little less than eight years. Got here in 2016. I've worked at a handful of parks. I started in the Tetons and then went to Glacier, then Carlsbad Taverns, then up to Denali. Miles, me and you, whoop whoop. Yep. And then worked for Rocky, also Miles, whoop whoop. That's right. Miles and James. And then Yellowstone, and then I got my first permanent job in Glacier doing media, and then came here permanently. I also am a Digital Communication Specialist like Ashton. I also work in the Superintendent's Office with Ashton, but it seems like everybody here on the team, we're all involved in media, web, social, photography, videography, kind of a little bit of everything. Podcasting. Podcasting now. Our resume is getting longer the longer we're here, so it's good stuff. Yeah. So now that you know who we are, let's give you some of the highlights of the park. So as far as the employees and the money, Yellowstone has about 750 employees each year and 350 of those are year-round permanent employees. And in addition to our paid staff, we also have about 450 volunteers that help with various things throughout the park. We have a federal appropriation, so the money that we get from Congress, you know, when a budget's passed, is around $40 million, but it takes at least double that to operate the park each year. I think last year it was around $81 or $82 million, and, you know, if you're a budget person, you're like, how does it work, you know, to run a park on $80 million if you only get $40 million? And basically, we make up the difference through other revenue streams, like, you know, when you come to the park and pay an entrance fee, or if you're a commercial tour operator in the park. And then we also have philanthropic donations, so people who donate to the park or our non-profit, Yellowstone Forever. And all that money is not even including the major infrastructure project dollars, because some years, with projects included, we spend upwards of like $125 million each year. Yeah, and let's talk about Yellowstone's resources. Yellowstone itself is a pretty big park, we're at 2.2 million acres, not the largest park in the Lower 48, I think we're second, Death Valley is 3 million or something, but we are pretty big, 2.2 million acres, and even more than that, Yellowstone is at the heart of the surrounding area, which is known as the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which is, you know, if we didn't have these made-up straight-line boundaries of the park, it's where our wildlife migrate, and where we share a lot of our processes and things like that, so it's a huge area. Geologically speaking, Yellowstone is an active volcano, and it sits atop a cooling magma chamber, and when water is heated by the cooling magma chamber, we get hydrothermal features like geysers and hot springs, so that's, I'd say wildlife and those are what we're most famous for, and the geysers and hot springs are what Yellowstone was originally set aside to protect, and Yellowstone's actually home to 10,000 hydrothermal features and over half the world's active geysers. Yeah, so if the volcano goes off, we'll be the first to let you all know. We'll broadcast live as soon as that happens to let you guys know, so make sure that you subscribe so you can find that out. Yeah, so Miles talked about wildlife. Obviously, if you want to see wildlife and those predator-prey relationships, Yellowstone is one of the best places in the world to see some of those interactions play out, so, you know, we got wolves, we got grizzly bears, we got cougars, we got bison, elk, bighorn sheep, even wolverines, which I haven't seen, but hopefully, fingers crossed, I will soon. All sorts of wildlife, but it's also, this is a super special place because of the history, so wherever 10,000 years before Yellowstone became the first national park, which happened in 1872, it was a place where American Indians lived and hunted and fished and gathered plants and quarried obsidian and used the thermal waters, and even today, there are 27 tribes with historic and modern connections to the land and resources within the area that we now know as Yellowstone. Yeah, and in addition to tribal history, Yellowstone is also home to a combined 25 historic sites, landmarks, and districts on the National Register of Historic Places, so a lot of really neat historic buildings and landmarks and things like that all throughout the park, so we have a lot of cool natural and cultural resources, and that's what brings a lot of people to visit the park. On average, we receive about four and a half million visits every year, and about 95% of that is in a six-month period between May and October, so a lot of visitation in the summer, not so much in the winter, but I think that's the best time to visit. In my personal opinion. I think so. Yeah, winter is pretty awesome. Yeah. A report showed that Tourism to Yellowstone contributes about 6,000 jobs in our gateway communities, so those are the communities that exist just outside the park at all our entrances, and about $600 million to the local economy in 2022. That's a lot. That is a lot of money. A lot of money and a lot of people, and so we, of course, have to have all the infrastructure that you need for all that huge amount of people, and because of that, we have tons of stuff in the park. Of course, we have over 400 miles of roads. We have lots of lodging, buildings, places to eat, bathrooms, of course, trails, all sorts of stuff, and our portfolio of all that stuff totals over $4 billion worth of infrastructure. With a B? A billion. Wow. That's a lot. Roads, bridges, then there's the things you don't even think about, like water and waste water systems, of course, campgrounds, hotels, then there's all the employee housing and all the facilities needed for the employees, so we're basically our own little mini-state up here. Since 2020, we have invested over $1.5 billion, with a B, into improving Yellowstone's infrastructure for you and also for future generations of visitors, and there's even more projects in the pipeline. Yeah, so that is a lot going on, and obviously, we can't manage all that alone, so we rely a lot on tribes, elected officials, nonprofit groups, local communities, states, other federal agencies. They all help us to take care of Yellowstone, and when you think of Yellowstone National Park, you think of the natural features, the cultural features, but there's also really important things, like hotels, restaurants, gas stations, general stores, and our concession partners run all of those, and our nonprofit partner, Yellowstone Forever, offers educational programs and runs the park stores as well, the bookstores that you see, the visitor centers, so they also support the park through philanthropic dollars that are really important to us. Yeah, so as you can see, there's no shortage of things to talk about when it comes to Yellowstone. We could go on and on probably all day, there's a lot to talk about, and there's a lot of content about all this stuff and more on natural and cultural resources in the park, and you can find a lot of that information on our park's website, which is nps.gov forward slash Y-E-L-L. Yeah, and then with all of that great information about the natural and cultural resources, we realized that there wasn't really any content around the non-historical human resources of the park. Obviously, we have a ton of history of the people who were here in the past, but not a lot about the people that are here right now who do the work to keep the lights on in the park year-round, and that's when we came up with our idea for our What We Do Wednesdays social media campaign in 2019, and since then, we've been highlighting our employees and what they do through photos and stories on our social media platforms. It's been really well-received both internally and externally. We have co-workers all the time, they're like, wow, that was cool, I didn't know that so-and-so did that, and so we thought, hey, why don't we try to develop some longer-form content and boom, now we've got a podcast. What We Do podcast is our new brainchild. Yes, and it's a pretty awesome brainchild, I think. With this podcast, we're operating under the assumption that if something is interesting to us, it'll also be interesting to you, our listeners. That being said, one of our intended audiences is current and future NPS employees, too, so we intend to cover some information that may get a bit jargony, like how to get jobs in Yellowstone and all the things that make Yellowstone work, and if you know anything about government agencies, you know we love acronyms and special terms. TLAs. That's right, exactly, TLAs. Yeah, three-letter acronyms. So, to help you out with all those TLAs and other terms, we've created a webpage with a glossary of terms and definitions, and you can find that at go.nps.gov forward slash whatwedopodcast. Yeah, I'm probably going to be referencing that sometimes. I literally had a meeting yesterday that was a BMA IDT. That was the calendar invite. No, but generally speaking, here are three things that we think that you should know about jobs in the federal government. So, this is kind of the insider's look into getting jobs in the federal government from those of us who have done that a few times, and the first thing that you really need to know about is usajobs.gov. This is the website where all government jobs are posted to, so if you're interested in applying for jobs at Yellowstone or in the National Park Service or in any federal agency, really, you need to get familiar with that website. So, after you listen to this episode, after you hit subscribe, go to usajobs.gov. Create a profile and check out what jobs are on there, because there is a lot going on there, especially across not just the National Park Service, but the federal government in general. So, I highly recommend that you use a resume builder if you've never applied for government positions before. Resumes are a little bit different than they are in the private sector. They're not the one-pager that you often use in the private sector. They're a little bit longer because you have to prove all your proficient and all the skills required for the position. So, that's why I recommend that resume builder. It kind of helps get you started when you haven't applied for a government job before. And I'd also recommend that you set alerts for saved searches for positions that you find that you're interested in. So, if you listen to an episode and we interview someone that is doing a job that you think is really cool, go on usajobs.gov and maybe set an alert so they'll email you any time that job comes up. We could go a lot more in-depth about writing resumes for government jobs, but that would take way too long here. Boring. We're not going to do that, but just know about usajobs.gov. That's a huge first step. Yeah. And the second thing that we think that you should know about jobs in the federal government is there are three main types of positions. So, you'll see seasonal positions, term positions, and permanent positions. So, first, the seasonal positions, those usually last for a specific amount of time during the year. So, for example, in Yellowstone, we hire seasonal workers for the summer and winter seasons, and those can last about five or six months or so. I think it's 1,039 hours at the max, so one hour short of six months. And then the second type, those are term positions, and those are usually project-based. So, maybe a park needs to hire someone to help with a specific type of project going on in that park. They'll hire this person, and that term position usually lasts for like one year, but it usually will not exceed four years. And then lastly, permanent positions, and those are your typical year-round permanent jobs, which is what all four of us who are on this podcast today have here in Yellowstone. Very lucky. Very lucky. Yeah. And the last thing are pay scales. So, there's four types of pay scales in the government. We have the Federal Wage Schedule, the Law Enforcement Officer General Schedule, the General Schedule, and the Executive and Senior Level. So, wage grade or WG, these are like our trades and our craft and labor employees, and the idea is that those wages are connected to the wages that are in the same, where the park is located. So, if you're getting paid the same amount for the people that are doing the same kind of work in your area, and that's like the people who are in our Facility Maintenance and Operations Division, law enforcement officers, obviously, those are our park rangers, the ones that carry the sidearms that are in, and they're out there, you know, protecting the visitors and the resources, and then the GS is basically everyone else in Yellowstone minus one person, and that one person is our superintendent. You know, we have, once you've risen to a certain level in government, you can apply it to the Senior Executive Series, and there's only a handful of parks that even have SES positions. I think it's like Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Everglades, and a few other parks, they have SES superintendents. Otherwise, most of those positions are at regional or national levels, but within the first three, each pay scale, so whether you're wage grade, GS, or LEO, there's 15 grades, so one through 15, and then each grade has 10 steps, one through 10. So, for example, you might hear someone say, like, I'm a GS 11-4, or 11-step-4, and that means they're on the general schedule, grade 11-step-4, and the reason we explain all this is because all of this information is public knowledge, so when you apply for a job, you can actually see what, you know, what you'll start at and what you can max out to. It's all public information on the Office of Personnel Management site, or OPM. I don't want to get out of this without using that for them. All right, so Yellowstone is a big park, it's got a lot of employees, and a lot of important issues going on all the time. That's part of the fun of this podcast, even the people who work here, we don't know everything that's going on. That is definitely true, I feel like I learn about new projects, or jobs, or things on a regular basis. Absolutely. Yeah, and with 750 employees, I've already met a few co-workers that I didn't even know I had doing this podcast, so it's been a lot of fun. We hope you enjoy those conversations as much as we have, and kind of develop an appreciation for what it takes to keep Yellowstone, this huge national park, up and running. And you know, maybe some of our listeners will be our future co-workers, who knows? That would be awesome. That'd be cool. Anything else, team? I don't think so. Nope. No, I think that does it. All right, well, thank you for listening, and we hope you enjoy the show.