Op-Ed | The National Park Service For Too Long Has Been Without A Permanent Director

Editor's note: Last January, when Jonathan Jarvis, the 18th director of the National Park Service, retired, Park Service Historian Harry Butowsky penned an op-ed on the qualities needed by the Service's next director. It has now been 10 months since Mr. Jarvis retired, and the Park Service remains without a permanent director. It's a position that desperately needs to be filled, he writes.

Since 2017 dawned, the National Park Service has been without a permanent director. The lack of leadership at the top of the agency is unprecedented and damaging. There is no one to speak for our national parks, there is no internal leadership. How long this condition will last I do not know, but it has to end. The National Park Service needs a director.

Although rumor has it that Dave Mihalic is in line to take over the job, I suspect that will not happen. It has been too long. For some reason, the Trump administration cannot make up its mind. Perhaps there are too many other pressing problems to be dealt with by the administration. In the past, we have had many examples of excellent leadership, some examples of poor leadership, but never in the history of the agency have we gone so long without leadership at the top. So for the sake of argument, let me repeat much of what I had to say on this matter last January.

The past seven years have been hard on the National Park Service. Our agency has been beset by low morale, a continued lack of adequate funding that goes back to the last century, a growing maintenance backlog, sexual harassment scandals, overcrowding in our national parks, fraud by at least one regional director, and an inability to turn the centennial of the National Park Service into a solid foundation upon which to base the next 100 years.

What is needed now is leadership of the type the National Park Service has not experienced for the last generation. The agency needs a director from the business community. He/she should have had experience in running a business and understand the necessity of meeting a payroll and showing a profit to the stockholders. While some knowledge and experience in natural and cultural resource preservation is desirable, it is not essential. The new director will have a staff to brief him/her on the current crop of critical issues. Once chosen, the chief historian could arrange a series of talks with the director to familiarize him/her with the history and mission of the agency.

As an historian, I look to the past. Many of our previous directors, beginning with Stephen Mather and Horace Albright, are now legendary. Mather and Albright established the National Park Service on a firm foundation and gave it life. Their policies and examples have served the agency well over the last century. They understood the importance of history and used history to give life to the National Park System.

These men were followed by Newton Drury, Connie Wirth, George Hartzog, Russell Dickenson, and James Ridenour. Each took on the problems of the day to enrich the Service. They each passed to the next generation of Americans a National Park System in better condition than when they received it.

All had important leadership qualities. They were able to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the National Park Service. Each had the ability to bring positive change to the agency. They were all men of substance and accomplishment with long careers before they became director.

The question today is where to look for a new director who reflects those qualities? Anyone can talk about vision, but few can get it done. I believe the new director must come from the private sector. Given the poor quality of leadership the National Park Service has suffered with 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 focus on the huge maintenance backlog and lack of adequate staffing in our parks. He/she will have to inspire confidence among our employees that their solutions will solve the agency's 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.

He/she must inspire an atmosphere of innovation where employees can contribute ideas to improve the management of their parks and, finally, he/she 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 no ties with the agency but be free to look at the agency with a fresh perspective to decide what must be done. They must be a problem solver. Our next director must give the National Park Service and its parks a new beginning. 

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.

We have a chance to begin again and start the next hundred years of 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. 

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. The National Park Service has existed in a vacuum for too long; it is time to name a director and fill that vacuum.