Staten Islanders Note Sparse Park Ranger Presence at Great Kills and Miller Field, Risky Bonfires Persist

Chronic understaffing of park rangers on Staten Island lays bare the frayed sinews of federal urban park oversight—and the limits of law enforcement halfway measures.

A parent walking the shaded pathways of Staten Island’s Great Kills Park may be startled by the sudden roar of a pack of unmuffled motorcycles, blurting past the 25-mile-per-hour sign as children scatter from their games. If it is after dark, the air might carry the scent of bonfires rather than salt spray, punctuated by the clink of glass bottles and the unmistakable tang of skunked cannabis. Both sights—rarely regulated—have become commonplace in two of New York City’s most prized but least guarded open spaces.

Since the pandemic, the National Park Service (NPS), the federal steward of Great Kills Park and Miller Field, has largely vanished from daily patrols. Official spokespeople point to Fort Wadsworth, several miles away, as the locus for ranger operations. Actual onsite ranger presence has dwindled to a few short, scheduled hours on Fridays and Saturdays, “when staffing is available.” Otherwise, a sign on Miller Field’s shuttered station greets visitors with bureaucracy’s quiet indifference.

While NPS asserts that patrols and programs continue, Staten Islanders disagree. The day-to-day stewardship has lately fallen to sporadic passes by the U.S. Park Police and, notionally, the NYPD—neither of which offer the kind of intimacy with local issues or consistency that permanent rangers once provided. Maintenance proceeds (barely), lifeguards return in summer, and volunteer cleanup crews soldier on, but the overall atmosphere is one of diminished order.

For families and residents, the effects are palpable. One concerned local, speaking to the Advance/SILive.com, mourned the change in tone. The park roads, she notes, are more dangerous; motorcycles and joyriders treat limits as suggestions. The main worry is for children—exposed on playgrounds or crossing lanes, now prey to reckless drivers unconstrained by any meaningful enforcement presence.

The maladies do not end at traffic. According to a National Park Service volunteer, nights in the parks have devolved into free-for-alls: bonfires, flagrant drug use, and littered bottles as routine. After 9pm, enforcement—always skeletal—disappears entirely. The “wild, wild west” analogy may exaggerate, but only slightly.

The slow detachment of federal park infrastructure from split urban spaces like these is not unique, but Staten Island is an especially sharp case. The old model—dedicated, on-site rangers—enabled both deterrence and relationship-building. In their absence, rules become performative. Residents clamor for stricter enforcement (real tickets, not just violation-by-camera), but the policing vacuum is not easily filled by infrequent patrols.

Urban parks in need of new guardians

The first-order implications are unsurprising: declining perceptions of safety, rising disorder, and erosion of the public’s trust in the institutions nominally responsible for their protection. But consider the more subtle, second-order effects: when families restrict visits or shun evening events, open space itself becomes less a public good and more a battleground for those keenest to exploit neglect. Volunteerism becomes strained; some may even lose faith in the civic value of these federal “gifts.”

Economically, Staten Island’s underserved parks punch below their weight. While Central Park and Prospect Park are buoyed by philanthropic support and robust city partnerships, federal properties languish at the budgetary margins in Washington. The NPS’s staffing woes are national, but the impact is exaggerated where resources and political clout prove puny. Local politicians can, at best, apply pressure—rarely cash.

Nor is this merely an island or urban issue. Across America, from Gateway National Recreation Area to troubled corners of Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco, park users report similar tales: thinning ranger ranks, declining capital investment, and a reactive approach to security. In a nation that has long lionized its “public lands,” chronic underfunding now threatens both safety and the broader civic ideal of equitable access.

New York City’s decentralized approach to parks governance—split between federal, state, and city agencies—has yielded patchwork outcomes. Where Central Park glows under the care of a private-public conservancy, and city parks benefit from dedicated NYPD patrols, the likes of Great Kills and Miller Field occupy bureaucratic no man’s land. Their stewards are too far, their mandates too diffuse, their budgets too brittle to supply more than tepid oversight.

What, then, is to be done? Re-staffing rangers and enhancing patrols carry real costs; Congress is unlikely to prioritize urban park safety above national icons, nor to bolster the NPS’s already substantial maintenance backlog (pegged at nearly $22 billion nationwide). Technology—cameras, remote ticketing—offers at best a supplement, not a substitute, for a visible, trusted official. In the end, locals will likely continue to rely, grudgingly, on volunteers, sporadic police patrols, and the hope of benign neglect.

We reckon that Staten Island’s predicament is a cautionary tale, not merely an anomaly. Urban parks, especially those under federal control, risk a downward spiral when guardianship recedes. To forestall this, bold experiment—devolving enforcement to local hands, creating conservancies, or at the very least demanding clearer lines of accountability—may be in order. Park space remains an asset only when it is also a sanctuary.

Absent such reforms, the city’s “wild west” corners will likely persist—unloved by their too-distant owners, policed by chance, and enjoyed mostly by the few willing to risk the chaos. New York has weathered worse, but its greener stretches deserve better than bureaucratic autopilot. ■