The Next Director of the National Park Service Will Be....

Is Jon Jarvis going to be the next director of the National Park Service?

Apparently Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has settled on his choice for the next director of the National Park Service and only the formalities of nomination and Senate confirmation remain to be done.

Sources within the Park Service's Washington office say that during a meeting Wednesday Secretary Salazar announced that the nominee to succeed Mary Bomar will be Jon Jarvis, currently the director of the Park Service's Pacific West region. If the nomination is made, and Mr. Jarvis is confirmed, he will bring with him not only a solid Park Service resume to Washington, D.C., but one heavily involved in science.

Since starting his National Park Service career in 1976 as a seasonal interpretive ranger at the National Mall, Mr. Jarvis been superintendent of two national parks, Mount Rainier and Wrangell-St. Elias, as well as of Craters of the Moon National Monument.

His rise through the Park Service saw Mr. Jarvis serve stints as a protection ranger, a resource management specialist, park biologist, and chief of natural and cultural resources through Prince William Forest Park in Virginia, Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas, Crater Lake National Park in Oregon and North Cascades National Park.

Mr. Jarvis also served a term as president of the George Wright Society. The society is a "nonprofit association of researchers, managers, administrators, educators, and other professionals who work on behalf of the scientific and heritage values of protected areas."

During a recent congressional hearing in California, Mr. Jarvis spoke of the agency's need to be involved in responding to climate change.

"We have in the National Park Service created a strategic framework,” said Mr. Jarvis. “We are looking at how our operations may be changed so we can reduce our own carbon footprint.”

Additionally, Mr. Jarvis said that: “I think there is a role for the National Park Service in carbon trading. In most of the large (parks), we are in active restoration. Those trees will sequester carbon. Understanding how we could market that in a carbon market would be important.”