>>1886093I worked as a law enforcement ranger (as opposed to interpretive) for the National Park Service for a while.
The training course lasts several months. You will have no income while going through the training because it is full time, sometimes a class will last late into the night, and sometimes you also have class on the weekends. It is academically and physically intense. Classwork and exams are like taking a college course, and the physical training is a lightweight version of boot camp. You will be running, hiking, doing situps and pushups, lifting weights, and more, all while studying the law, history, nature, etc. During the firearms qualification, we averaged 2,000 rounds a day for pistols (Sig P228 and P229) and 300 rounds a day shotgun (Remington 870). If you pass the physical qualifications (run 1.5 miles in 12 minutes or less, benchpress 85% of your bodyweight, and I forget how many situps and pushups you have to do in 1 minute), pass the firearm qualifications, pass the written exams, and pass all of the training scenarios (first aid, tracking, traffic stops, arrests, role-playing, etc.), then you're qualified to be a seasonal park ranger.
You then have to apply for jobs at different parks. This is a pain in the ass, and in many cases unless you know someone who works there already or pick up the phone and talk to them, you're never getting hired. Once you do, you're only employed on a seasonal basis, ie for a few months, at the end of which you must apply for the job again and hope you get hired. Once you've been a seasonal ranger for two years, you can apply to become a permanent ranger, which involves going to FLETC (where all the other law enforcement agencies, like the FBI, US Marshals, etc. does their training) and going through another full-time training course, which is where you qualify on rifles, submachine guns, etc. Once you're a permanent ranger, you quit losing your job every 3 to 6 months.
