UPDATE | White House Withdraws Nomination Of Concessionaire To Be NPS Director

Editor's Note: This updates with additional reactions. 

Scott Socha, a long-time officer for national park concessionaire Delaware North, had his nomination for director of the National Park Service withdrawn by the White House on Monday.

Socha, a 25-year employee of DNC, was nominated In February by President Donald Trump and immediately drew scrutiny. Most recently he has served as DNC's president, Parks & Resorts and Australia, with an eye on driving business to the company's operations.

Socha also was part of DNC's leadership team during the period when the company trademarked names in Yosemite National Park and held them hostage for $51 million, a fee that later was negotiated down to $12 million.

Laiken Jordahl at the Center for Biological Diversity said individuals who "sell off our public lands have no place running our crown jewel national parks. There's little reason to hope Trump’s next nominee will be any better, but let’s hope he’s gotten the message that the American people want someone who serves our parks not the bottom line of corporate interests and elites.” 

Socha, who began his career with Delaware North in 1999, served as the company's vice president for financial planning and analysis and risk management from January 2012-March 2017, when he became president of its parks and resorts division. 

The choice of Socha was unusual in that he represents a corporation that has held concessions contracts with the Park Service and which currently operates lodging operations tied to national parks, from the Squire at Grand Canyon in Tusayan, Arizona, to Tenaya at Yosemite in Fish Creek, California, near the south entrance to Yosemite, and within Olympic and Shenandoah national parks.

Delaware North also operates lodgings and tourism companies in West Yellowstone, Montana, that take summer and winter visitors into Yellowstone National Park, and runs retail operations in the park.

“We’ve said all along that Scott Socha was deeply unqualified to run the National Park Service,” said Center for Western Priorities Deputy Director Aaron Weiss. “Our parks deserve far better than someone who spent his entire career trying to privatize them. President Trump should have no problem finding a qualified leader inside NPS… unless they’ve all taken Doug Burgum’s latest buyout offer.”

If the president nominates another individual to lead the Park Service, that individual will head an agency that has lost roughly a quarter of its workforce in the past year, but which has been told to remove interpretive materials addressing climate change, slavery, and other issues the Trump administration believes inappropriately colors history. He or she would also be challenged with reversing widespread poor morale in the agency, something predecessors have struggled with. 

“The withdrawal of this nomination is an opportunity to reset,” said Gerry James, deputy director of the Sierra Club’s Outdoors For All campaign. “The next National Park Service leader must make good on a promise to the parks, not just in words but in action. That means restoring staffing and capacity, rejecting the whitewashing of history, protecting the full and complex stories of our public lands, strengthening infrastructure and visitor experiences, and ensuring these places are accessible and welcoming to all.”

The Park Service has been without a Senate-confirmed director since Chuck Sams left the position at the end of the Biden administration. Filling the role has been Jessica Bowron, the agency's comptroller.