From rangers to rangers
The rangers of the “Greifensee Foundation” celebrate their tenth anniversary in 2019. On this occasion they invited the members of the Swiss Rangers, the national professional association for Rangers to the General Assembly.
The annual meeting was supplemented with international workshops on junior ranger programs and interpretation as part of the ERF train the trainer program.
On wednesday 10th April rangers from Georgia, Albania, Portugal, Slovakia, Serbia, Romania, Switzerland and Germany were involved by Niki in a workshop for setting up a Junior Ranger program. To get a real look on best practice all seven junior ranger groups of the two protected areas were in action outside at the same time in the afternoon together with the international ranger guests.
Workshop and best practice with JR
The second day was about “Heritage Interpretation”. This is a based on a communication technique of the US National Park Rangers. The day started with a moving video message from Shelton Johnson, US Park Ranger, Division of Interpretation & Education, Yosemite National Park and an introduction to interpretation techniques by Urs Wegmann. In the afternoon the participants had to show some interpretation examples as best practice in the field.
Nature Interpretation Workshop and best practice in the field
After a european rangers group picture the evening was celebrated with a typical swiss cheese fondue around the campfire, which for many of the participants was the first cheese fondue in their life.
During the General Assembly on Friday, the foreign delegations traveled to Zurich for one day. In the evening, the actual anniversary celebration took place with a special ranger cake, live music around the campfire and much more.
On the last day it was time for field trips. The rangers first attended the so-called “Rangers funny fake news tour” – an excursion where the participants have to guess what’s right and what’s not. The end of the event with a total of almost 70 rangers and employees from protected areas was an excursion to the beaver reserve in Marthalen.
This brought to an end four moving, intensive and instructive days, all based on the motto Rangers to Rangers and Rangers without borders.
Link to the Junior Ranger program of the Swiss Rangers Association https://junior-ranger-schweiz.ch/
who met in Uster Switzerland for a ranger workshop.
The rangers met because of a training session at Greifensee.