A career lawyer, Ed Keable, has been named superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park/DOI

Editor's note: This updates with additional comments from the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks.

A lawyer with three decades of experience with the federal government but none on the ground in the National Park System on Friday was named superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, a highly unusual move for a park that has struggled in recent years with sexual harassment issues and internal dissension and seen a revolving door of acting superintendents.

Edward Keable, who has worked for the Interior Department's Solicitor's Office for 23 years, is to move to the park within 60 days, a release from the National Park Service said. 

National Parks Traveler has requested an interview with Keable, and Park Service staff was reaching out to see if he would grant it.

"What in the world qualifies him to be a superintendent?" Phil Francis, chair of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, said after hearing the news. "In my experience, I have never known a person to be appointed to be a superintendent of a major park who didn't have significant National Park Service experience. Experience in smaller parks, experience in one of the disciplines found within a park, or something that gives them the special needed qualifications that a superintendent must have.

"This is extremely rare, and while I don't know this individual, on the face of it it seems improper," he added.

Later Friday, the Coalition issued a stronger statement opposing Keable's appointment.

“Ed Keable is not qualified to manage and lead a complicated park such as the Grand Canyon. While Mr. Keable may possess the ‘passion’ and ‘leadership skills’ that Acting Director Vela referenced in his statement, it does not mean that Mr. Keable has the knowledge, skills, and ability to be superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, one of the most high-profile, complex, and heavily visited national park operations in the System.

Individuals named to Senior Executive Service level positions have historically demonstrated significant skill in complex park management, earned through experience working in the field. Mr. Keable’s selection sets a terrible precedent and robs the National Park Service career workforce, who have decades of expertise working in national parks, of opportunities to lead the agency in senior superintendent posts.

In addition, Mr. Keable, who has worked closely with Secretary Bernhardt for years, will need to contend with efforts to develop a resort in Tusayan, just outside the gates of the park. Coming as no surprise to anyone following Secretary Barnhardt’s actions at the helm of Interior, Secretary Bernhardt’s former law firm, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, has been hired to lobby for its development. At this crucial time, when leadership is desperately needed, Grand Canyon needs an experienced and strong advocate, not a politically appointed superintendent.

On the heels of Secretary Bernhardt showing such disregard for NPS employees during the escalating pandemic by keeping parks open and putting their health and safety at risk, the decision to put someone with no national park experience in charge of a crown jewel of the National Park System is appalling.”

Former National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis, who had worked with Keable during his career, didn't dismiss the appointment out of hand.

"I know Ed and worked with him at DOI. He is smart and capable and a career public servant with experience in the legal aspects of public lands," Jarvis said in an email. "It is an odd choice for the superintendent of Grand Canyon, but if Ed has a good operational deputy and a strong NPS management team in the park, he should do fine."

In taking on the challenging task, Keable will oversee the 1.2-million-acre park's 350 employees and operations that range from river operations and lodging, dining, and outfitting concessions to air tours.

Another extremely hot issue he'll have to confront are efforts to develop a major resort just outside the park on the South Rim. Opponents to the project being pushed by an Italian developer have said it could see more than 2,000 housing units and several million square feet of commercial space reach to within a half-mile or so of the park, and could impact groundwater flows that feed the canyon's springs and hanging gardens.

Keable steps into a job whose last full-time superintendent, Christine Lehnertz, was temporarily removed from her job in the fall of 2018 after undisclosed allegations were made against her. Lehnertz eventually was cleared of any wrongdoing, but she refused to return to Grand Canyon and the Park Service, saying what she experienced convinced her she could better impact people's lives elsewhere. She resigned from the Park Service in March 2019 shortly after she was cleared. Today she leads the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.

Lehnertz had been handpicked by former National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis to move from the same job at Golden Gate National Recreation Area to the Grand Canyon in July 2016 to help the park overcome a long-running episode of sexual harassment.

The turmoil that swirled up around Lehnertz went back more than two decades. Reaching back to about 2000, life deep in the Inner Gorge of Grand Canyon at times reflected rowdy, sexually charged scenes from a frat party for some National Park Service employees, with male employees pawing and propositioning female workers, some of who at times exhibited their own risqué behavior. The behavior was largely ignored by park managers, including former Grand Canyon Superintendent David Uberuaga and even former Intermountain Regional Director Sue Masica.

But a group of 13 former and current Park Service employees in the early fall of 2014 wrote then-Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to complain and ask for an investigation. That investigation by the Office of Inspector General generated a tawdry list of inappropriate behavior, from male employees taking photographs up under a female co-worker's dress and groping female workers to women dancing provocatively and bringing a drinking straw "shaped like a penis and testicles" to river parties. The incidents, the letter to Secretary Jewell charged, "demonstrated evidence of 'discrimination, retaliation, and a sexually hostile work environment.'”

Since 2003, the OIG reported stated, there have been a dozen disciplinary cases taken in connection with employee behavior in the Grand Canyon's River District. The matter led Uberuaga to retire rather than take an assignment in Washington, D.C. 

Keable is well familiar with the sexual harassment issue in the park. Part of his role in the Solicitor's Office was working with the Office of Inspector General on its investigations, and providing legal advice regarding those investigations.

During a May 2016 hearing by the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations that was "Investigating the Culture of Corruption at the Department of Interior," the attorney testified that, in his opinion, the Park Service was working to address the problem.

"I believe what they have done is they have looked at the IG report of the Grand Canyon and they are assessing how to address procedural issues to ensure that those kinds of situations do not repeat," testified Keable.

He also told the subcommmittee that, "I think the Park Service is taking very seriously the information in the IG report on the Grand Canyon and are very seriously addressing the issues highlighted by that report."

The allegations made against Lehnertz in 2018 that eventually led to her departure from the Park Service claimed she fostered a hostile atmosphere among the park staff and spent recklessly on renovations to employee housing. In the end, Interior's Office of Inspector General cleared her of all allegations, and in its report created a portrait of one of her accusers as determined not to follow her directives and even impede them. 

Regarding air tours, the Grand Canyon staff long has struggled to manage them. The problem seemingly was heading towards resolution in 2011 when the Park Service released a draft environmental impact statement that claimed a proposed air tour plan would boost the level of "natural quiet" in the park -- quiet that allows you to hear the murmuring of creeks, the roar of rapids on the Colorado River, the melodies of canyon wrens. But congressional efforts blocked the plan from taking effect, according to the park. 

While Keable's lack of on-the-ground experience in the park system has alarmed some Park Service veterans, David Vela, the de facto director of the agency, said the lawyer "brings excellent leadership skills and passion for our nation’s public lands to his new role."

“His experience at the Department of the Interior also provides a broader perspective that will be an enormous benefit to the park, employees, and visitors," Vela added in the Park Service release without elaborating.

Keable said in the Park Service release that he was "greatly honored that Department of the Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and Deputy Director Vela have entrusted me to work alongside the dedicated employees at the Grand Canyon National Park to conserve this natural wonder for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of the American people and the whole world.”

The lawyer, who gained his law degree from the Vermont Law School, has served as the assistant solicitor of General Law for the Office of the Solicitor of the Department of the Interior since March 2012. He has worked for the solicitor's office 23 years, according to the NPS release.