The Rambling Ranger Podcast Episode #15

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George Potts - Former Scottish Countryside Rangers Association Chair & Ranger

Excerpt from “The Rambling Ranger Podcast” 2021

"My name is George Potts, I was born and raised in Dundee and worked as a Ranger there for 33 years. Dundee is a great city to live and work in. There is easy access to the wider countryside right on our doorstep. We have the magnificent Tay estuary running past us. It is a fortunate city in terms of its setting and opportunities that it offers.

In 1979 I had finished college and my interest in fish took me off to fish farming. I did that for a few years which was character forming. It was a tough and interesting regime. I then got paid off and needed a job. I went back to Dundee where a seasonal post came up at a local Country Park. I applied for it and didn’t get it. After a week or so I was called and asked if I was still interested. So I started seasonally (short contract) in February 1983. The pay was rubbish, the hours were long, but the range of jobs I got to do and the people I worked with, made it bearable.

Rangering at that time involved a degree of policing and enforcement in terms of modifying visitor behaviour. I was in an “urban” Country Park on the edge of town. It was a fairly new park and the attitudes towards the park needed to be challenged. It was not a valued resource and it was seen as a place you could have a drink and party, indulge in anti-social behaviour. It was like the “wild west”. We never knew what to expect one day to the next. I think a lot of Rangers will relate to that experience. We had challenging times but gradually, as the Ranger Service was established, we were able to engage with our visitors. People realised it was a place that was looked after and these problems faded. We were allowed to get on with engaging the local schools, delivering environmental education, and working with community groups. Most of all developing a recreational facility. I had to learn to sail, surf and kayak, a big part of our job as a developing water sport facility. We made it busy, we taught a lot of people to sail, and I nearly drowned a few people learning to kayak. We worked long shifts, in the Summer the park was manned for 12 hour shifts 7 days a week.

It was a boom time for Rangering, a very different outlook from what we have today. On the seasonal side of things, posts were added, full time posts were established, and there was a career structure within that. Many Country Parks had a Senior Countryside Ranger for each base, overseen by a Chief Ranger. A Countryside Officer was usually based in department headquarters a key element to ensure the priorities for the Country Parks were always represented.

It was still a bit of a “boys club” to be honest at that time. There were women involved in Rangering but they were a minority. It attracted applicants from quite a wide variety of backgrounds. My first boss was a shipwright by trade and a brilliant manager. A lot of his philosophy and outlook stayed with me right through my career. These were formative times for me. In terms of working with the public, I would say I was a bit raw but I really enjoyed working with schools and was able to make something of that. My National Ranger training in 1986 changed the whole scene for me. I understood about the role of our profession, I understood about the national network, the philosophy of Rangering. That gave me a different take on the job I enjoyed.

Through the 80s and into the 90s we got a new visitor centre in my Park, which added to our staffing levels. From a small Country Park that had anti-social behaviour we were now getting 90,000 visitors per year. This was Scotland’s smallest county park and we really put ourselves on the map in terms of the work we were doing and the levels of engagement we had. I reckon we were the most accountable Ranger Service in Scotland. We kept a daily diary and recorded all the work that we did which provided, in hindsight, a real basis for understanding the importance of reporting and annual reporting. This was so important in providing a profile for the work that Rangers carried out. This was a real growth time, with many new people coming into the profession.

There wasn’t the same pool of specifically educated and specialised candidates out there as there is now.

That was a strength though, not a weakness. Recruitment would attract applicants from all sorts of backgrounds who could bring industry or commercial experience. If you could engage well with people and had an interest in nature then you had that foot in the door. In post pandemic times however, with the realisation that Scotland needed more Rangers there has been an interesting turn of events in that people from a wide variety of backgrounds are once again coming into the profession.

It has always been frontline, and not in a bad way. It is the frontline in terms of introducing people to the countryside, encouraging responsible behaviour, but mostly ensuring that they are welcome. That’s been the core of a Rangers job since day one.

Providing a welcome for visitors to the countryside."

To listen to the whole podcast or hear more from Scottish Rangers check out: https://soundcloud.com/theramblingrangerpodcast/sets/world-ranger-day

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Scottish Countryside Rangers Association (SCRA) Website: https://www.scra-online.co.uk

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