Peninsula Daily News news sources
The nominee for director of the National Park Service is being praised for his ties to the West — including direct involvement in proposed Olympic National Park land swaps with the Hoh and Quileute tribes and the removal of the two Elwha River dams — as he heads toward Senate confirmation.
Jon Jarvis, picked earlier this month by President Barack Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to be head of the agency of 58 national parks, 54 wilderness areas, 10 national seashores and a long list of lakes, battlefields, trails and campgrounds, is a 30-year Park Service employee who has come up through the ranks by climbing mountains and conquering bureaucratic jungles.
If confirmed by the Senate as expected this fall, Jarvis will move into the director’s role from his position as chief of the Park Service’s West Coast and Pacific properties.
“He’s a star,” said Norm Dicks of Belfair, the veteran Democratic congressman for the North Olympic Peninsula who lobbied the White House for Jarvis’ appointment.
“This is the one he needed,” Dicks told McClatchy News Service.
Dicks is chairman of the House interior appropriations subcommittee, which has control over the Park Service’s $3 billion annual budget.
“We couldn’t have a better person,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Mountlake Terrace, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over the nomination.
During his 30 years in the National Park Service, starting as a ranger, Jarvis — who has been ordered not to speak to reporters until after his confirmation — championed the effort to transform the “scenery management” approach of “old buffalo” superintendents into one where protecting natural and cultural resources is as important as attracting tourists.
Mount Rainier boss
Before heading up the West Coast component of the Parks Service — for which he ordered that his 56 parks and other Interior properties be carbon-neutral by 2016, when the Park Service celebrates its centennial — Jarvis was superintendent of Mount Rainier National Park.
He twice climbed the 14,411-foot peak.
His next ascent might be more difficult: Jarvis will head an agency that faces troubling operational budget shortfalls, a multibillion-dollar maintenance backlog, employee morale problems and fundamental questions about its future.
But those who have worked with Jarvis say they can think of no more qualified person to head the Park Service.
“It was an inspired choice,” said Bob Barbee, a former superintendent of Yellowstone National Park and regional director of the parks in Alaska, who said Jarvis has a “complete understanding of the values the parks represent” but is “no shrinking violet.”
Trained biologist
A college-trained biologist, Jarvis moved up through the ranks, including stints as chief of natural and cultural resources at North Cascades National Parks in this state and superintendent at Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho, at Mount Rainier and at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in Alaska.
At Mount Rainier between 1999 and 2001, he wrote a management plan that included broad strategic goals and improvements that needed to be made immediately. His successors say the plan has aged well.
As West Coast director, Jarvis has been working to negotiate sensitive land swaps between Olympic National Park and the Hoh and Quileute tribes involving areas — including a school — that are in a tsunami zone.
Elwha River dams
He persuaded Park Service headquarters staff to make the 2012 removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams on the Elwha River a priority. The Elwha River project, aimed at restoring a legendary salmon run, would be the second largest National Park Service restoration project ever, behind only the Everglades in south Florida.
“To have the best person rise to director is all you could ask for,” said Dave Uberuaga, superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, who was Jarvis’ deputy superintendent at Mount Rainier.
Uberuaga joined Jarvis when the latter became the first Mount Rainier superintendent to climb the landmark peak in four decades.
“He realizes it is more than just the big parks in the West,” said Sean Smith, Northwest regional policy director for the National Parks Conservation Association in Seattle. “He has a strong focus on preserving natural and cultural resources.”
Get to know him
David Szymanski, superintendent of Lewis and Clark National Historical Park, said that in 2006 everybody he knew in the Park Service was telling him to get to know Jarvis.
So that year during a leadership development program, he accepted an opportunity to shadow Jarvis for two weeks.
“Jon’s a really smart guy who understands the way the Park Service works,” Szymanski told The Daily Astorian in Astoria, Ore.
“The exciting thing for me [is] I sincerely think he is the best person in the Park Service for this job. To have them pick the best person is outstanding.”
Chip Jenkins, superintendent at North Cascades National Park, said he appreciates Jarvis’ emphasis on developing science-based programs to manage the parks and on connecting people to the parks.
Jarvis also is no stranger to Washington, D.C., and its politics.
He spent several months on detail to Cantwell’s Senate office in 2001 and is credited with knowing the inner workings of the Park Service’s headquarters.
When the George W. Bush administration sought to make significant changes in the Park Service’s management plan to open the door to commercialization and upgrade the focus as vacation destinations at the possible expense of natural and cultural resources, Jarvis pushed back forcefully.
‘Pushed envelope’
“He put his position at risk,” Uberuaga said. “It was one you needed to fall on your sword for, and he did.”
“He pushed the envelope on this, and the previous administration didn’t like it,” said the conservation association’s Smith.
Jarvis isn’t without his critics, however, including the powerful Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
Jarvis angered Feinstein earlier this year over an expiring lease for an oyster farming operation at Point Reyes National Seashore on Drake’s Bay north of San Francisco. Feinstein wants the lease extended.
In a May letter to Interior Secretary Salazar, Feinstein said she found Park Service actions “troubling and unacceptable” in light of a National Research Council report that said the park had exaggerated the negative effects of the farm.
Jarvis subsequently apologized, but he denied the Park Service had deliberately misrepresented any data.
Dicks said the White House was well aware of the flap but nominated Jarvis anyway.
“This guy is straight and honest,” Dicks said.