Op-Ed |The Park Service Has Lost Its Conservation Compass
By Jeff Ruch, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
In the past six months, the United States has experienced two of the largest sea turtle mortality events in history. Each took place on the shores of a national seashore, but the National Park Service did not take the lead in responding to either mass die-off. In fact, the Park Service is currently dismantling its only program dedicated to sea turtle science and recovery.
In December, dropping temperatures in the waters off Cape Cod National Seashore drove approximately 500 nearly frozen endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles onto beaches. Unable to handle the casualties, private volunteers organized the largest sea turtle air evacuation in history, first to Tennessee and then on to the Gulf Coast.
In February, an unexpected freeze in Gulf waters, off of Padre Island National Seashore, resulted in thousands of cold-stunned green turtles, a threatened species, washing ashore where they were hustled into a variety of shelters. However, nearly 10,000 “greens” died in the process.
Just months earlier, the NPS’ own Sea Turtle Science and Recovery program, based at Padre Island, had sounded the alarm about the record influx of greens. Dr. Donna Shaver, the STSR director, had published a study suggesting that even higher numbers of these threatened sea turtles may return to Texas’ shores if habitat protections and incubation support remain strong.
Yet, at the same time as numbers of green turtles reaching Texas’ shores are spiking, the National Park Service is significantly cutting back on sea turtle – especially green turtle – recovery efforts. The STSR was ordered to turn back approximately $300,000 in grant funds it had been awarded for green turtle recovery work through 2023. That move came as NPS further deemphasized green turtle work and limited sea turtle recovery to the boundaries of the national seashore. Moreover, NPS told Dr. Shaver that she should limit her future scientific research only to subjects bearing directly on park administration.
The result at Padre Island is that wildlife conservation has been reduced to a secondary consideration in how the park is run.
This unfortunate trend is not limited to Padre Island. California’s Point Reyes National Seashore has just approved a plan to kill native tule elk because they consume fodder on land leased to politically connected dairy farmers whose leases would be extended to 20-year terms.
This deficit in the Park Service’s conservation ethic is also exemplified by the recent decision by Big Cypress National Preserve to create trails to allow swamp buggies into some of its wildest areas so hunters can more easily retrieve carcasses. Big Cypress’ former superintendent, John Donahue, characterized how misguided this move was by writing:
“In effect, what God and Mother Nature would not allow to be impaired by recreational pursuits, the NPS will spend taxpayer dollars to inflict upon the most primordial wilderness areas in the United States.”
Perhaps this growing institutional disregard for conservation is because it is not a required element for promotion into the NPS management ranks. Unlike managers of national wildlife refuges, national park superintendents are not required to have any conservation experience or training. One superintendent described the real, but unwritten, criteria for selection of park superintendents as “politics, partnerships, and public image.”
This myopic view of what is required for park leadership was reflected in the formal proposal by Jon Jarvis, the last Senate-confirmed NPS director, to make “philanthropic success” (i.e., fundraising) a core competency for selection and promotion into park management positions. It would have been the only core competency for park leadership codified in NPS policy. While that proposal was thankfully defeated, the thinking behind it remains, unfortunately, too prevalent inside NPS.
As the Biden administration considers nominees to lead the NPS through the first decade of its second century, it should consider picking a conservation leader, rather than an NPS careerist. Hopefully, the nominee will be someone who will restore the Park Service to scientific leadership and to its former role as an important global force for conservation.
Jeff Ruch is Pacific director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and served as its executive director for 22 years.
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Comments
These are examples of why the National Park Service needs its vision revived and its resources restored. But picking out these failures in isolation is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. In sharp contrast with national parks:
• The U.S. Forest Service continues to prioritize devastating "thinning" and "salvaging" of vast tracts of forest across the country as a false solution to wildfire, liquidating old-growth groves, and allowing the hunting of predators including wolves and mountain lions.
• The Bureau of Land Management allows destructive livestock grazing on almost all of the lands it administers, has opened millions of acres of land to fracking and mining, and provides minimal protection for archaeological and historic sites.
• The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service puts hunting and fishing above all other values, which includes clearcutting standing forests to artificially create "young forest" habitats for common game species, growing row crops for waterfowl so hunters can shoot them, and stocking alien fish so anglers can catch them.
Yes, the National Park Service has allowed a number of bad projects and there is a lot that needs to be done to rebuild the agency after decades of being starved for resources and pressured by political interests. But compared with other public lands, national parks are still best protected by far.
Excellenr Op. Ed. and right to the point,The question is where to look for a new director. Anyone can talk about vision, but few can get it done. I believe the new director must come from the private sector outside of the ranks of the National Park Service and federal government. Given the poor quality of leadership the National Park Service has suffered for the last generation, an infusion of new blood is critical. Only an outsider will be able to secure the agency’s confidence after decades of lackluster appointments. We need a new beginning. We need a person with a fresh outlook and new ideas.
The next Director will have to inspire confidence among our employees that their solutions will solve our problems. Every decision he/she makes must be transparent and be explained to the employees of the National Park Service. He/she must inspire everyone to do his/her best in the performance of duties and exhibit a passion for the parks and the core natural and cultural values they contain.
The next Director must inspire an atmosphere of innovation where employees can contribute ideas to improve the management of their parks and, finally must have the patience to work out difficult issues that are complex and not subject to immediate solution.
I believe our next director must have the qualities and talents of Mather. Our next director should have a record of accomplishment in business or some other aspect of the private sector. Our next director should have no ties with the agency but be free to look at the agency with a fresh perspective to decide what must be done.
Our next director must be a problem solver. Our next director must give the National Park Service and System a new beginning. He/she must have the patience to work out difficult issues that are complex and not subject to immediate solution.
And yet, the incoming director should also realize and appreciate the wondrous resources – natural, cultural, historical – held within the National Park System and be committed to seeing they remain unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.
In 2021 we have a chance to begin again and start the history of the National Park Service with as strong of a leader as Mather and Albright demonstrated in the founding years of the National Park Service. We need to build a firm foundation to do this.
The National Park Service needs the best leadership available. The American people and the thousands of hard working and loyal NPS employees deserve no less.
I agree that the National Park Service has allowed a number of bad projects and there is a lot that needs to be done to rebuild the agency after decades of being starved for resources and pressured by political interests. The National Park Service needs the best leadership available. The American people and the thousands of hard working and loyal NPS employees deserve no less.
Good comments, except that as a retired national park ranger with almost an entire career spent as a seasonal out in the parks and forests, I know that there are many good candidates for NPS director hidden within the ranks. NPS politics force good employees to keep quiet and do the best they can in spite of the all too intrusive politics. Many emerge in retirement as super competent spokes people for improving the system, because the know the corruption from their inside experience, having to keep their heads down, when it would have been tempting to speak up. The Coalition to Protect the National Parks has lots of people with the kind of experience that gives them the best ability to recommend a candidate within the service who could at last be unleashed to accomplish reforms as director.
Sadly this seems to be a trend across the conservation landscape. Another poster child is the AT, who has lost thier trail compass.