Dalesfolk: Kate Hilditch

Meet Kate Hilditch, park ranger, a 27-year-old brunette with a lively smile and penetrating ice-blue eyes. There is a good chance that she will need that smile in the months and years ahead.

For some decades, the national park was viewed by a good proportion of its residents as a remote, austere body not tuned into local needs.

This was a perception hotly disputed by the park, and in many ways it was indeed unfair, but the view persisted in some quarters and still does today.

When Britain's national parks were first conceived over 50 years ago, their charters said they should protect the environment and encourage access for visitors but no mention was made of the need to protect the social and economic well-being of the locals.

That oversight in the legislation has now been remedied and the park is anxious to show that it is, indeed, sensitive to local views.

And Kate Hilditch is one of 17 rangers appointed to liaise with the locals and report their feelings back to the park authorities.

"We are not park policemen, which some people seem to believe," says Kate with that bright smile. "One of our most important functions is to get to know the residents in our own areas, explain to them the work the park is carrying out, and build up mutual understanding and respect. It is a two way process and the rangers are the contact point."

The 17 rangers, who all look after their own area of the park, were appointed in January this year.

They have many and wide duties: supervising conservation work, providing information to visitors, reporting on matters like traffic congestion, and generally oiling the wheels as the park tries to maintain the difficult balance between the needs of their local communities and those of millions of visitors.

"Obviously, if we came across visitors who were lost on a walk or were damaging walls and footpaths, we would have a police-like duty to solve the problem," says Kate. "But, first and foremost, our job is to liaise with the residents - better still, to become part of that local community.

"I have been doing the job for almost eight months now in Upper Wharfedale and I thoroughly enjoying it. I am getting to know lots of residents and, more importantly, they are getting to know me."

Kate, who lives in Skipton and works from the national park office at Colvend, Grassington, was born and bred in Huddersfield. Her parents were keen walkers, campers and birdwatchers, so she was brought to the Dales at every possible opportunity whilst still a toddler.

The seed was sown but it took some time to germinate. She took a degree in history at Exeter University and then realised that she could not spend the rest of her life in stuffy classrooms as a teacher.

The great outdoors beckoned and, like so many of her generation, she picked up her backpack and set out to see the world. But her travels always seemed to lead in one direction: in both South Africa and Australia, she ended up working outdoors on various conservation projects.

Back in the UK, she did a diploma in outdoor studies and looked round for her dream job. It came up two years ago when she spotted an advert and the wheel turned full circle: she joined the Dales national park as a field assistant.

"It was the sort of job I had been dreaming about all my life," she laughs now. "But I don't think I realised it at the time. Those childhood visits must have carved the Dales deep into my sub-conscious."

There are perhaps cynics who would suggest that Kate is between the devil and the deep blue sea (perhaps the American phrase, between a rock and a hard place is more accurate).

Her area of operations, Upper Wharfedale, has seen more than its fair share of rows between the national park and the locals.

Some years ago, the ARC, the Association of Rural Communities, was founded in Kettlewell, largely to protest about park policies which were (again this word) perceived to be more in favour of visitors than residents.

And it is well known that the people of those parts are not slow in expressing their views in plain, blunt English, nor are they easily cowed by officialdom.

So Kate and her 16 ranger colleagues have their work cut out. It is important that they succeed, for a smooth running national park is a major factor in the social, economic and environmental lives of Craven.

And although this remark will undoubtedly be judged as sexist, I would like to be there when Kate flashes that magnetic smile at some grumpy hill farmer whose grazing has been trampled by errant walkers. Good luck, Kate.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.