In a week that has exposed the pervasiveness of sexual harassment in Hollywood, a new federal survey released Friday by the Department of the Interior points to a similar culture within the agency’s National Park Service (NPS).
According to the survey, some 39 percent of NPS employees say they have experienced harassment or discrimination on the job. “In the last year, over 10 percent of NPS employees experienced sexual harassment, almost 20 percent reported experiencing gender-based harassment, and 0.95 percent reported experiencing sexual assault,” Buzzfeed reported.
The survey also shows a lack of faith in the federal agency to take care of their employees whenever they experience any kind of harassment. Seventy-five percent of National Park Service employees who said they had been harassed said they did not report the incidents, with half of that group citing their concerns that it wouldn’t have made difference anyway. Thirty-three percent explicitly stated that they “did not trust the process.”
In January of 2016 the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General reported that it had “found evidence of a long-term pattern of sexual harassment and hostile work environment” in multiple national parks, including the Grand Canyon National Park’s River District, the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area in Georgia, and De Soto National Memorial in Florida.
As with any occupation that is rooted in “outdoors culture,” an emphasis is placed on masculinity in the Park Service, often resulting in a lack of female park rangers.
In Texas, where only 8 percent of the state’s 500 game wardens were women, some members of the Parks and Wildlife Department complained to the state in 2012 about a “legacy” of racial and gender intolerance, according to in-depth reporting by HuffPost. Similarly, female employees of the U.S. Forest Service in California filed a class-action lawsuit in 2014 over the same issues women in the Texas parks service were facing.
The Department of the Interior has begun to take steps to address the numerous allegations of harassment and discrimination that have seemingly flown under the radar or been ignored for decades. Ahead of the release of the survey, the agency said it would add more staff to the NPS Employee Relations and Labor Relations team, in addition to backing employee support groups and training sessions.
In a Friday news conference at the Grand Canyon, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke addressed his commitment to ending the culture of harassment at the NPS.
“In the past, ‘zero tolerance’ has been an empty phrase — instead of taking action, our leadership fell back and took no action at all,” said Zinke. “That’s over. We’re going to root out this virus, and it begins with putting a new culture in place that embraces the best of the Park Service’s values.”