YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK CHIEF RANGER STEVE SHACKELTON (RIGHT) TALKS WITH SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR, KEN SALAZAR DURING HIS VISIT TO THE PARK. PHOTO COURTESY OF NPS National Park Service (NPS) Director Jon Jarvis announced last week that Steve Shackelton has been selected as the associate director for visitor and resource protection. Shackelton, who has been chief ranger at Yosemite National Park for the last eight years, will assume his duties in March in Washington, DC.

As associate director, he will manage national fire, aviation, law enforcement, resource protection, wilderness, regulation development, public health, emergency medicine, and search and rescue programs. He replaces Karen Taylor- Goodrich who is now superintendent of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.

“Steve brings incredible field experience mixed with Washington know-how to this position,” said Jarvis. “He will be a key member of the leadership team that sets the policies and direction for the entire National Park Service. As our na- tional chief ranger, Steve will step up the infusion of science, law, and technology into all disciplines of ranger activities and ensure that fire management, wilderness, and other programs have the best information possible as we face a changing climate and other factors that impact park resources.”

Shackelton will also concentrate on improving workforce conditions especially in the area of employee education, and crafting formal programs to diversify the ranger workforce. Shackelton has served as superintendent of Pinnacles National Monument in California and in Washington, DC, in the NPS Office of Legislative and Congressional Affairs and the U.S. Senate as part of the NPS Bevinetto Fellowship.

He spent nine years in Alaska and five years in Hawaii in resource protection management positions. He began his NPS career at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming as a ranger working in fire, search and rescue, emergency medicine, and law enforcement; and six summers as a fire fighter in the Sierra National Forest.

Shackelton has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Criminology from California State University, Fresno, and a Masters of Public Administration from the University of Alaska, Anchorage. In 1990, he completed the FBI National Academy executive management program and served as a Congressional Fellow from 1997 through 1999. In 2005, he finished the federal Senior Executive Candidate Development Program – an 18-month program in the Department of the Interior, completing a detail assignment with the University of California and time at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Executive Development Program.

Shackelton currently lives in Yosemite and Mariposa with his wife, Jane, and has a daughter, Dana, at the University of California-Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine.