A Juneau guide is headed to Haines this summer to be the new park ranger.
Jacques Turcotte was hired to fill the position which has been vacant since Travis Russell left to become a Haines police officer in November 2021.
State parks’ Southeast superintendent Preston Kroes said he has been filling in as a park ranger and will keep doing that for now.
“I’ll be doing that this spring prior to him coming on,” Kroes said.
Kroes said it has been a hard position to fill, but he attributes that to a larger workforce shortage.
“At one point, the state had eight park ranger positions vacant,” Kroes said. “We couldn’t fill a lot of our positions. We currently still have, I think, two out of the eight vacant.”
Most of what the new ranger will be doing is law enforcement, but Kroes said it’s also the lead position in Haines for answering day-to-day questions from people. Haines gets a lot of visitors from Canada and Europe.
“Along with being out there and the public asking where to go see eagles, and what’s the best time of day to see wildlife, there is an interpretative aspect to the job. You’ve got to be well rounded,” Kroes said.
The new park ranger has to go through the state’s Department of Public Safety academy in Sitka.
Kroes called the park ranger one of the best kept secrets in law enforcement.
“We’re trying to develop and kind of reprogram our law enforcement program so we’re not looked at anymore as just backwood park rangers that don’t know the difference between a tree and a criminal,” he said. “For the last decade we’ve been active shooter trained – in a school, a store or obviously in our own parks.”
The state’s Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation oversees Chilkat State Park, Chilkoot Lake Recreation Site, Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve and Portage Cove State Recreation Site. The state also owns a campground at Mosquito Lake but doesn’t actively maintain it.