A park ranger or forest ranger is a person entrusted with protecting and preserving parklands – national, state, provincial, or local parks. Different countries use different names for the position. Ranger is the favored term in Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Within the United States, the National Park Service refers to the position as a park ranger. The U.S. Forest Service refers to the position as a forest ranger. Other countries use the term park warden or game warden to describe this occupation. The profession has often been characterized as "help protect people from people, people from the natural resource and the natural resource from the people" The profession includes a number of disciplines and specializations, and park rangers are often required to be proficient in more than one.

The term ranger first appeared in 13th-century England.^{[citation needed]}

The term ranger seems to be derived from the 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.

Coordinates: 39°00′28″N 94°32′05″W / 39.007813°N 94.5348°W / 39.007813; -94.5348

Swope Park is an 1,805-acre city park in Kansas City, Missouri. It is the 29th-largest municipal park in the United States, and the largest park in Kansas City. It is named in honor of Colonel Thomas H. Swope, a philanthropist who donated the land to the city in 1896. In the 1,769 acres (7.16 km²), it hosts Starlight Theatre, an 8,000+ seat outdoor theater; training grounds for Sporting Kansas City and their reserve team, affectionately called the Swope Park Rangers; the Kansas City Zoological Park; ten shelter houses and a host of athletic venues including baseball diamonds, soccer fields, a swimming pool, a frisbee golf course and Swope Memorial Golf Course, a public golf course that hosted the 1949 Kansas City Open Invitational, a PGA Tour event. Also located in the park is the Lakeside Nature Center, one of Missouri's largest native species rehabilitation facilities, which serves as an environmental educational center.