We want to congratulate Ranger Anna Marini for being selected for the Director’s Visitor Safety Achievement Award for her outstanding dedication, commitment, and achievements to reducing risk to visitors and preventing serious and fatal visitor injuries. These awards are the highest honors given by the National Park Service for outstanding achievements in visitor safety and employee safety and health.

Anna Marini, Preventative Search and Rescue (PSAR) Coordinator at Joshua Tree National Park (JOTR) is selected for the Director’s Visitor Safety Achievement Award for her outstanding dedication, commitment, and achievements to reducing risk to visitors and preventing serious and fatal visitor injuries. During fiscal year 2023, Ranger Marini expanded the JOTR PSAR program to address increased heat injuries affecting visitors that were leading to an increase in search and rescue operations at the park. Ranger Marini recruited and trained 30 new volunteers to rove park trails providing safety messages, heat illness prevention tips, trail information, and more. She also consolidated the Trail Rovers program into the PSAR to streamline training and communications for trail operations.

Under her leadership, the PSAR program logged 3,100 volunteer hours, contacted 83,700 park visitors during 566 patrols. This team documented 13,200 preventative actions where volunteers directly altered unsafe visitor behavior through face-to-face education. She represented JOTR on multiple media interviews and filmed two videos for park digital media platforms sharing important visitor safety messages to the public. She also contributed to a national effort to develop two position descriptions for dedicated PSAR positions in national parks. She has worked with other park units to stand up PSAR programs of their own, all the while exceeding expectations in her role at JOTR, keep park staff and visitors safe.

Congratulations to Anna, a vital member of the Joshua Tree team! We are very proud of her for this well-deserved award!