Well, it's official. President Obama has nominated Jon Jarvis to be the next director of the National Park Service.
Three months after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told those in a staff meeting that he wanted Mr. Jarvis, currently director of the Park Service's Pacific West Regional Office, to be his NPS director, the nomination has been announced.
“President Obama has made an outstanding choice for director of the National Park Service,” the Interior secretary said Friday afternoon. “There is no substitute for experience, and Jon Jarvis has three decades of hands-on experience in our parks that will be invaluable as we seek to reinvigorate and improve our National Park System in time for its 100th anniversary in 2016.”
As regional director of the Pacific West Region, Mr. Jarvis is currently responsible for the 54 units of the National Park System in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California, Nevada, Hawaii and the Pacific Islands of Guam, Saipan and American Samoa. He oversees 3,000 employees with a $350 million annual budget.
The choice was applauded by Tom Kiernan, president of the National Parks Conservation Association.
“Jon Jarvis is a seasoned professional and strong leader who understands the challenges of managing national parks and the importance of inspiring excellence among the thousands of National Park Service professionals who are the stewards of our national treasures for our children and grandchildren. He is well-versed in the threats to our natural and cultural treasures, and the leadership, collaboration, and cooperation needed to restore them," said Mr. Kiernan. "Jarvis fully understands the detrimental effect on the park system of long-standing federal funding shortfalls, the importance of science-based decisions, and the threats posed by climate change, chronic air pollution, inappropriate development, and the inability of the Park Service to acquire priority lands from willing sellers within park boundaries. He appreciates the role of national parks as living classrooms for visitors and schoolchildren, and embraces the opportunity to enlist Americans from all walks of life in the restoration of their shared heritage in time for the 2016 centennial of the Park Service. Our national park heritage will surely benefit from Jon Jarvis’s leadership.”
If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Mr. Jarvis will take the reins of an agency with roughly 20,000 employees, a maintenance and operations backlog pegged at somewhere between $8 billion and $9 billion, and facing such politically charged issues as guns in the parks, snowmobiles in Yellowstone, and how to confront climate change in the parks.
Since starting his National Park Service career in 1976 as a seasonal interpretive ranger at the National Mall, Mr. Jarvis been superintendent of two national parks, Mount Rainier and Wrangell-St. Elias, as well as of Craters of the Moon National Monument. His rise through the Park Service saw Mr. Jarvis serve stints as a protection ranger, a resource management specialist, park biologist, and chief of natural and cultural resources through Prince William Forest Park in Virginia, Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas, Crater Lake National Park in Oregon and North Cascades National Park.
Mr. Jarvis also served a term as president of the George Wright Society. The society is a "nonprofit association of researchers, managers, administrators, educators, and other professionals who work on behalf of the scientific and heritage values of protected areas."
Mr. Jarvis is currently the co-leader of the Children in Nature taskforce with the National Association of State Park Directors. He is proud of his work with the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor in an effort to provide a quality visitor experience to the USS Arizona Memorial and associated states.
A native of Virginia, Jarvis has a B.S. in biology from the College of William and Mary and completed the Harvard Kennedy School Executive Program in 2001.
Comments
Frank_C -
My reading at the time of Mr. Jarvis' comments on the proposed BLM solar projects indicated he was taking a very responsible position. His overall concerns seemed to address the problem of too many uses for too little water in the Southwest; adding water-cooled solar projects that could require large amounts of additional water in that region doesn't seem prudent.
I'm a big fan of alternative energy, including solar - but such projects must be carefully planned and located.
Like you, I'm delighted to see a nomination of someone who has come up through the ranks. He seems to have a very diverse background, which will be a plus.
Coming up through the ranks as he has done, Jon has the chance of being an excellent Director one who will be sensitive to the needs of the field, yet with enough experience to find his way through the political thickets.
I am fearful that his confirmation hearings won't get done until after the August recess of Congresss. That means that the NPS will be without its Director until well into the fall. It's too bad that this nomination has taken so long to get done.
Rick Smith
Those of us with a special love for Crater Lake National Park applaud the Obama appointment of Jon Jarvis as the next NPS Director. Jon served Crater Lake as resources managment specialist during the early 1980's. This was a special time when Congress initiated directed funding for lake monitoring and research.
Owen Hoffman
Oak Ridge, TN 37830
There's a bit more to the solar plants in the Amargosa basin issue. Solar plants can be air cooled or water cooled, and just like coal or nuclear plants, water cooled plants are more efficient (something like 10-12% more efficient). Finding water for water cooling in the desert is problematic. In the Amargosa basin (roughly NE of Death Valley to the Nevada Test Site (Yucca Mountain), what groundwater there is, is already over-allocated: there are more water rights than water. Pumping the aquifer dry will wipe out the pupfish in Devil's Hole (by drying up Devil's Hole, part of Death Valley NP), and dry up the wetlands in that wildlife refuge. BLM has designated several large blocks of that basin for solar power leasing, and NPS is pointing out that the planned water withdrawl will have major impacts and probably would violate ESA & NEPA (never mind that there isn't enough water down there to last for the planned lifespan of the solar plants). My understanding is that NPS has no objections to air-cooled solar plants in that area.
Salazar at Interior has made energy one of his priorities (climate change is another): these are the kinds of issues that need to be hashed out to do energy development right. [Look for the same water v. energy issues with Shell Oil's claim on water from the Yampa for oil shale development: oil shale needs a whole lot of water. NPS will be part of the issue (DINO is downstream on the Yampa), but there will be several other stakeholders taking the lead.]
I'm very happy that Jarvis has been nominated.
tomp -
Thanks for a nice summary of the water issues related to proposed solar projects and other energy development.
Jarvis was on target in pointing out these problems early in the discussion on these projects.
Yep!
Jarvis isn't a hydrologist or natural resource scientist. He listens to NPS & USGS scientists when they brief him, reads & actually thinks about reports, and has the experience from seasonal interpretive ranger to protection ranger to biologist & resource manager to superintendent to regional director to understand the importance of information when he reads it. That's why he was up to speed and knew what he was talking about.
That's why I'm happy: someone who actually reads reports, and knows enough of the big NPS picture to act on them. Not just natural resource reports, but cultural resources, interpretation, visitor services, across the board. NPS is not only, or even primarily, about natural resource protection. Jarvis is a better choice for director than the best resource scientist.
The nomination of Jon Jarvis as Director of the National Park Service is an exciting announcement and I could not be more pleased or optimistic about the future of the Service with him at the helm! I have worked with Jon off and on since his stint at Guadalupe Mountains National Park and have the greatest confidence in his abilities to seek a balance on any issue that is before him. It is good to see a person with his background and experience in Washington.
They have also found that individual solar panels on rooftops will be much more effective than large solar plants.
Ranger Holly
http://web.me.com/hollyberry