Concept
A ranger, park ranger, park warden, or forest ranger is a person entrusted with protecting and preserving parklands – national, state, provincial, or local parks. "Parks" may be broadly defined by some systems in this context, and include protected culturally or historically important built environments, and is not limited to the natural environment. Different countries use different names for the position. Warden is the favored term in Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Within the United States, the National Park Service refers to the position as a park ranger. District Rangers in the U.S. Forest Service do not perform the same duties, instead focussing on administering Ranger Districts, subunits of National Forests. Few other positions in the U.S. Forest Service are titled as "Ranger" but there are several positions that perform similar outdoor work, including Foresters, Forestry Technicians, and Law Enforcement Officers. Other countries use the term park warden or game warden to describe this occupation. The profession includes a number of disciplines and specializations, and park rangers are often required to be proficient in more than one. They take care of national parks. In medieval England, rangers, originally called under-foresters, were the most junior officials employed to "range" through the countryside enforcing the forest law imposed by William the Conqueror to protect the "vert and venison". Their duties were originally confined to seeing that the Forest Law was enforced in the borders, or purlieus, of the royal forests. Above them were the Foresters-in-Fee (later called Woodwards), then the Verderers, then the Justices in Eyre. Their duties corresponded in some respects with that of a mounted forester. The term ranger seems to correspond to the Medieval Latin word regardatores which appeared in 1217 in the Charter of the Forest. Regardatores was later rendered as rangers in the English translations of the Charter. However, others translate regardatores as regarders.
