Working with Park Rangers, and their field supervisors, today I see we have many common experiences and concerns. This sometimes transcends simple processes, like property management. We brought six field kits that included First Aid, flashlight, digital camera and binoculars; these were turned over to Petra’s Chief of Operations 8-days ago. So far, the property people haven’t released the equipment. At least it hasn’t made it to the field yet. We hope that secure lock-boxes are being procured in order to provide Park Ranger access. We’ll see…
One of the other commonalities is that sometimes Park Rangers are asked to solve problems and remedy issues beyond their authority or scope-of-work. Sound familiar? Remember the saying: “One riot, one Ranger”? Here the Rangers (and for that matter the Tourist Police) have very limited authority to act, and are often relegated to reporting the names of miscreants to someone, somewhere. PAP Management asked our team to help with donkey control issues many weeks ago; we’ve been analyzing and helping. We composed an Issue Analysis for the PAP Director, and can’t talk about that yet; along with donkeys potentially coming up Wadi Araba from that un-named country west of here (that was given to me today as justification as to why the Ranger needed those binoculars). Petra has a plethora of commercial operators with donkeys all over the primary resources (as in non-renewable archaeological resources & deposits). Resources are being trashed, and from a sheer safety stand-point “Safety Dude” says action is needed: worldwide annually more people are killed by donkeys than by airplane crashes.
Now for some estimates of some Petra animals: 1,000 cats (14 in one place); 350 donkeys (in from Umm Sayhoun ); 250 horses (from Wadi Mousa); 100 dogs; 25-30 camels (also from Umm Sayun). You’ll notice that folks in this region aren’t hung-up on spelling and prefer to go with phonetics. I’ve seen at least three spellings on highway signs for Wadi Musa and Umm Sayhoon. Since donkeys an cats share he trash bins of Umm Sayhun, I have a new appreciation for camels.
BTW- the registration for our "Best Practices" Workshop in Amman next Tuesday is up to 85 (incredible considering invites didn't go out until this week).
the equipment you brought with you will never get to the hands that need it.......
ReplyDeleteBut I understand why you did what you did.....