State spends millions in forest ranger overtime, lawmakers call for bigger force

Responding to calls, piling up hours

By Gwendolyn Craig

In early March, spring teased hikers at trailheads, but winter still reigned on Adirondack peaks. In three days, hikers on four of the state’s tallest mountains called for help. Rob Praczkajlo answered them all.

“I can’t stand when I miss an incident,” the 51-year-old forest ranger said.

First, there was a rescue on Wright Peak. The next day in a 33-hour marathon, Praczkajlo orchestrated two nearly simultaneous rescues, one on Saddleback Mountain, the other on Basin Mountain. 

It took 30 rangers, and Praczkajlo wanted 35. Some new rangers didn’t have the proper winter gear. He loaned them his own. His weekend wrapped up searching for a hypothermic hiker lost in the thick groves of snowy spruce fir in the Seward Range.

Praczkajlo and his colleagues saved all four people that weekend in some of the most grueling weather and treacherous terrain. Rangers hardly had time for their own winter boots to dry between assignments.

The overtime demands resulting from these search and rescue missions come along with other issues confronting the state Department of Environmental Conservation, including calls from rangers for improved equipment, additional training and more mental health support. 

The state is paying rangers more than $1.6 million in overtime annually, with nearly half of that to those covering the Adirondack Park. With some rangers starting at a base salary of about $61,000, the overtime amount paid in 2023 is equal to more than two dozen hires, not including the cost of benefits.

“Frankly, I will say that the overtime for forest rangers in general is a reflection of the need for more personnel,” said state Assemblymember Deborah Glick, a Manhattan Democrat who chairs the environmental conservation committee.

Overtime

Some overtime funds are reimbursed from the U.S. Forest Service for New York rangers called to wildfire fighting across the country. Between 2019 and 2021, the service reimbursed New York about $2.2 million. There were no out-of-state deployments in 2022. In 2023, the service reimbursed the state nearly $680,000 and Canada reimbursed nearly $291,000. The reimbursements covered about 60% of New York’s ranger overtime costs that year.

The annual overtime amounts spiked to more than $2.6 million during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and more than $2.1 million in 2021. During those years, the state relied on rangers and other employees to staff COVID-19 test and vaccination centers. Outdoor rescues also increased. 

“March 10 of 2020, I pretty much left my home with a duffle bag full of clothes and didn’t return,” Praczkajlo said. 

The union delegate racked up the highest amount of overtime of any ranger in the state that year, more than $67,000. Praczkajlo is one of a few rangers with the experience and training needed to lead various emergency responses. He would like to see more rangers with the same credentials.

His time cards during the height of the pandemic show Sisyphean stretches of working at coronavirus test sites. One 22-day shift was followed by a positive COVID-19 test and quarantine. Then came a summer of rescues, including a 15-hour ordeal on Whiteface Mountain and a two-day odyssey on Mount Marcy.

Rangers do not crack the top 100 overtime recipients among the state workforce. Most of those employees work at the state’s psychiatric centers and Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. A psychiatrist in the Bronx was the highest overtime earner in 2023, receiving more than $350,000.

But Glick and other lawmakers, including state Assemblyman Matthew Simpson, said the overtime shows rangers need more resources.

“Our forest rangers provide an invaluable service to the safety of both New York state residents and visitors alike,” Simpson, a Republican from Lake George, said. “Rangers are spread thin in the State of New York and many times in stressful and sometimes life-saving situations.”

Additional staff is not the focus of union representatives it once was, but that demand could be returning.

With retirements and promotions to supervisory positions, 113 field rangers patrol the state, down from 122 in 2023. This year’s ranger academy in Wanakena enrolled just 11 eligible participants for a class that was supposed to be 25. Two dropped out as of the end of May.

Sean Mahar, interim DEC commissioner, said attrition is expected in the academy. A forest ranger Civil Service exam is scheduled for September with applications due in mid-August. Mahar said the forest ranger exam will be offered virtually to expand the pool of candidates. 

Rangers are going through leadership changes with recent retirements and incoming staff, Mahar said. DEC is “always looking to rein in overtime spending as much as we can,” he added.

The leadership changes extend to the top of the department, too, with Mahar’s predecessor having left his post in mid-April. Basil Seggos was the department’s longest-serving commissioner and also spoke with the Explorer about rangers.

Seggos’ comments on ranger staffing have evolved over the last few years. In state budget talks of 2020, Seggos said he was satisfied with the size of the ranger force. But in an interview with the Explorer on his last day as commissioner, Seggos said he was always behind the scenes advocating for more ranger funding. He was particularly proud to have ushered through a 38-ranger academy at the end of 2022.

“What I saw my job as, in part, was to increase the size of the ranks to meet some of the incredible demand that they have on them,” Seggos said. He often refers to the ranger force as the state’s “Swiss Army knife.”

“Not just search and rescue, but wildfires, education, the ambassadors of the agency, the really incredible work that they do on the police side as well,” he said. 

Search and rescue

During the March rescues, management balked at Praczkajlo’s request for 30 rangers, he said, which involved calling some from more than three hours away. They were worried about what they would do if something else happened in the state, Praczkajlo said.

“Even though we just had the academy with 38 people,” Praczkajlo said, “we’re still understaffed.” 

Andrew Lewis, a 39-year-old forest ranger in the Adirondack High Peaks, said sometimes there’s just no way around the overtime hours when it comes to all-night rescues or fighting wildfires.

But there are times when the rescue calls seem to come on a conveyor belt, and rangers feel the strain. Sabo, also a union delegate, recalled a busy week in the summer when he worked 72 hours in five days, several for rescues in the dark of night.

“We’ve lost the appreciation of the mental and physical, and sometimes emotional toll that five mountain rescue operations take on a human,” Sabo said.

Proposed reforms

There’s a growing list of frustrations that the PBA would like their state employers to address.

They would like the state to purchase better rescue equipment rather than relying on hand-me-downs, like sleds for carrying people out of the backcountry, from the Olympic Regional Development Authority. 

Rangers purchase much of their own winter hiking gear, something a new nonprofit called the Forest Ranger Foundation hopes to provide. Lewis is one of the founders. 

“We will never stop going into the woods and saving people’s lives, but it wears on you mentally,” Praczkajlo said. “It’s like, what support is there? How much support is there from Albany for us saving people’s lives when we’re using all of this old, retired equipment?”

Rangers were frustrated to learn earlier this year that the state was ending its relationship with Wilderness Medical Associates for backcountry wilderness response training. Now, they’ll be trained under state Department of Health protocols, which they’re concerned will not adequately address the remote and life-threatening nature of some of their incidents.

Forest rangers are trained to fight wildfires and were sent across the country and to Canada to help combat blazes. While those trips rack up overtime, it is reimbursed to the state. Perryman said he’d like to see more rangers help with those responses and more resources devoted to wildfire training.

Then there is the retirement benefit issue: Since 2017, rangers, environmental conservation officers and park police have lobbied for a 50% pension after 20 years of service instead of the current 25 years. The measure would bring rangers and environmental conservation officers in line with other law enforcement.

The state Legislature has passed a parity bill four times as of this publication, but it has been vetoed by the executive branch.

Perryman cited the death of his colleague, Capt. Christopher Kostoss, in his plea to lawmakers last year to pass the pension legislation. Kostoss, a 49-year-old ranger with 23 years of service, died by suicide in May 2022.

“He needed and wanted to retire,” Perryman said at an Albany budget hearing in 2023. “Had Chris been able to walk away and take care of himself, he might still be with us today.”

Simpson said the growing shortage of rangers “has been exacerbated in part by a competitive opportunity from other State law enforcement agencies with better pay and benefits. Improving the retirement from 25 to 20 years of service to be on par with other agencies would be a step in the right direction.”

Mental health

Rangers also discussed the difficulty of not having an on-call system. Perryman said while rangers off-duty are not required to go to an emergency response, there’s always the knowledge that you could potentially be leaving someone in danger, or a fellow ranger in the lurch.

“That weighs on people,” he said. “I don’t want to take away from people being able to earn what they want to earn. (There are times) when you’re hungry for it; other times, family needs come first.”

Lewis said work often bleeds into personal lives. The short, curt communication used in rescue situations doesn’t always switch off easily after an incident is over.

“The hardest thing to do is transition back out of that and into your family life,” Lewis said. “You’re trying to make that transition from parking your truck in the driveway and walking through the front door.”

“We don’t just do this work and shut it off after our 8-hour shift,” Praczkajlo said. “From the time you’re awake to the time you’re asleep, you’re thinking about being a ranger and doing the ranger job.”

In the summer of 2023, another colleague fell to suicide. David Cornell, assistant director of the DEC’s Division of Forest Protection, died at age 52. He was a forest ranger in DEC’s Region 6 for over two decades before moving to management in Albany in 2021.

Praczkajlo said it’s difficult to answer the whys of the deaths, but he called it “ridiculously incorrect … to say it had nothing to do with work.” Every ranger, Praczkajlo said, is suffering from mental health problems. 

“You can only go and do this job and save people, and deal with dead people, and search for kids, and find children deceased from drowning, and all the things that we do … we try to do it 100%,” he said. “We’re not just there to collect a paycheck and go home at the end of the day, and not care about stuff that we do. All the rangers have serious compassion for all the people that we rescue.”

Seggos said the suicides weighed on him.

“I always ask myself if there’s something more I could have done, could I have worked more broadly on mental health earlier in my tenure, could I have intervened?” Seggos said. “In the case of the two individuals who died by suicide, I don’t know the answer to that. But I asked the question of myself because that’s the kind of standard I hold myself to, that is, not just floating through this job with reckless abandon. I really have put a huge value on the people of the agency.”

Under Seggos’ leadership, rangers have standardized mental health training. The former commissioner said the DEC was one of the earliest police agencies to do so in attempts to remove any stigma tied to mental health care. 

Praczkajlo said there’s more to do. He recalled rescuing a man on Nippletop Mountain years ago. Due to the cold, the hiker lost his toes.

“I was feeling like I did not do a good enough job,” Praczkajlo said. “The captain looked at me and said, ‘Rob, you have to find a good therapist on your own because the department doesn’t have anything for you. Good luck.’” 

There are few mental health providers in the North Country but Praczkajlo turned to telehealth. He would like the DEC to offer an employee assistance program for therapy options. Mahar said there is an employee assistance program, and the DEC is “working with other law enforcement entities to make sure that we’re tapping all the resources that are available, providing the support to our forces and staff where we need it and where they need it.”

Not all stories end in sadness though, and Praczkajlo loves to keep in touch with the people he has helped in some of the most precarious, wild and beautiful parts of the state. There’s a camaraderie among rangers, too, and a sense of connection.

It’s “part of ranger culture,” Lewis said, to have and share those rescue stories.

“We love reliving it, and having been part of it,” Lewis said. “It’s not like we’re all grumpy that we have to go rescue somebody. We all love doing that.” 

Top photo: Rangers Charlie Foutch, top and Andrew Lewis, assist an injured hiker down the Trap Dike at Avalanche Lake on Mount Colden in August 2023. Photo courtesy of Rob Praczkajlo Editor’s note: This caption was updated to clarify the credit and month.