This is not an ordinary book review. The only reason I know about this book is because I read in the news that National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis had been disciplined for writing it, so this review will also discuss that context.
As readers of National Parks Traveler know, the book was the subject of an Office of Inspector General investigation that found Mr. Jarvis had intentionally skirted the Interior Department's Ethics Office to write it, and that the director lied to Interior Secretary Jewell about some of the details.
The IG report tells us that Interior Department officials are concerned that the book looks like a government publication, which it is not. Indeed it does look like one, with a huge NPS arrowhead logo on the front cover containing the book’s title and the name of its author (Jonathan B. Jarvis), and a bison that overlaps with the arrowhead; the effect is of the NPS logo come to life.
The IG report tells us that some of the DOI officials interviewed were concerned that the use of Mr. Jarvis’s job title in the book is inappropriate, creating the appearance of government endorsement.
The report says, “Two areas in the book reference Jarvis’ government title: his biography in the back, which highlights various positions that he has held at NPS, and the book’s preface, written by writer and producer Dayton Duncan.”
In fact, there is another place Director Jarvis’s title is used, and used very prominently: the blurb on the back cover. The purpose of the blurb is, of course, to explain to people who are considering purchasing the book what the book is about. Here’s the blurb, in its entirety:
As it celebrates its centennial, the National Park Service now manages more than 400 special places. In these pages, Jonathan Jarvis, the 18th director of the National Park Service, adds a new chapter in the evolution of the national park idea. National parks, he asserts, are expressions of our values. What unites this increasingly diverse system of natural wonderlands and historic sites, in an increasingly diverse nation, are the values we share in common--and Jarvis provides an impressive list of parks and the values they illuminate. –Dayton Duncan
According to the IG report, “Jarvis stated that he purposely tried to downplay his government position in the book by limiting the use of his title and using a photo of himself not wearing his NPS uniform.”
This is disingenuous at best. Director Jarvis’s position is not downplayed, it is a central feature of the book’s narrative. That’s clear from what he said to the IG: “Jarvis said that the book ‘wasn’t about’ him; it was about what he was trying to accomplish in his tenure as Director.” But that is a distinction without a difference.
This is not just a book about American values, or a book about the relationship between those values and the national parks; it is very clearly a book about Director Jarvis’s vision of those two things—a very active vision, in which he himself “adds a new chapter in the evolution of the national park idea.”
The spotlight on Director Jarvis goes beyond the blurb and the preface. The book’s Epilogue -- which, like the blurb, is not mentioned in the IG report -- is not only written by Director Jarvis, it is written in the first person, about his experiences in the NPS. It begins: "As a young ranger during the winter of 1976-1977, I spent many a cold, windy day in the marble chamber of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C. On the coldest days, hours would pass without a single visitor, so I was alone with Mr. Jefferson. His writings, carved into the porticos, became familiar verse...."
There is a very real sense in which this is a book “about” Director Jarvis. That alone seems unbecoming.
The values discussed in the book are not in themselves controversial. They include such universal values as Integrity, Honesty, Respect, Conservation, Restoration, and Science. What’s painful here is that Director Jarvis’s career reflects a marked lack of adherence to such values.
Many National Parks Traveler readers made this point in their comments on Traveler's story about the OIG investigation, saying Director Jarvis’s ethics lapse is “evidence of a culture of arrogance and abuse of power.” Readers have provided a long list of investigations and complaints that show a pattern of “gross mismanagement” and “cover-ups” under Director Jarvis, and have pointed out that “Violating agency policy and then justifying it to the Inspector General as ‘risk taking’ demonstrates he neither understands nor appreciates the burden of leadership responsibility.”
My own experience with Director Jarvis supports this perception. For almost a decade, I watched as Mr. Jarvis, first as Western Regional Director and then as National Park Service director, supported Point Reyes National Seashore in leveling serious false charges against a third-generation Point Reyes rancher who restored the historic Drakes Bay Oyster Farm only to have it snatched from the community and destroyed to create an artificial “wilderness.” There is a grotesque contrast between the actions taken against Drakes Bay Oyster Company and the values Director Jarvis claims he embraces: Enterprise, Entrepreneurship, Hard Work, Ingenuity, Science, and Working Lands.
To represent the value “Working Lands,” Director Jarvis profiles Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site in Montana. The passage reads in part: “From the family farm, forest, and ranch, Americans have formed a working-class of people tied to the lands that encompass the green pastures of the Shenandoah, to the Great Plains of the Midwest, and the fertile valleys of California. At times romanticized, Americans today are still working their lands as a family garden, or a manicured lawn, or as multigenerational farmers and ranchers. The National Park Service keeps this value alive through a variety of sites.”
Grant-Kohrs Ranch is a historic site only. It commemorates the cattle ranching of the past. Does Mr. Jarvis really think that Working Land that is no longer working “keeps this value alive”? How does Mr. Jarvis square his claim to admire Enterprise and Entrepreneurship with his agency’s ruthless and entirely unprincipled fight against a family farm that exemplified those virtues? How can Mr. Jarvis claim to believe in Science as a value when his agency has been caught red-handed committing scientific fraud?
The Guidebook to American Values and Our National Parks, by Jonathan B. Jarvis is, as Mr. Jarvis suspected, a book that should never have been published.
Sarah Rolph has closely followed the case of the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. and its fight against the National Park Service to remain in business at the seashore. She is writing a book about its last steward, Kevin Lunny. Along with other Drakes Bay supporters, Sarah created and continues to maintain the advocacy website http://savedrakesbay.com/core/
Comments
re: "I am unaware of any major Republican that is or has proposed the elimination of the National Parks"
See selected quotes below, from Jeffrey St. Clair's "The Rise and Fall of Richard Pombo" http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/08/30/the-rise-and-fall-of-richard-pombo/
The oyster company's support for Pombo is consistent with its smear campaign against Jarvis and NPS scientists. Their assault on environmental protection law was launched during Bush and Pombo's leadership. Clumsy PR ploys like Ms. Rolph's expose their dependence on fringe grievances and unethical tactics. By rehashing old rubbish in reputable online outlets like NPT & HuffPo proponents of ultra-conservative Wise-Use initiatives are able to build a body of citations that appear credible to the uncritical and casually-informed. When readers are not offered critical support from judicious editorial context, such disservice threatens both our natural and civil environment.
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"In 1996, Pombo published a booklength screed against the Endangered Species Act and environmentalists. Titled This Land is Your Land ... which called for the dismantling of the Endangered Species Act and disposal of public lands to private interests. Though not a bestseller, the book acquired the allure of a Gnostic gospel among the "Wise Use" crowd ... But the Wise Use Movement's backing of Pombo certainly doesn't explain his rise to power.
...
Pombo's scheme to sell off millions of acres of federal forest and range lands, once considered political poison, was adopted by the Bush administration in the fall of 2006, with a proposal to dispose of 200,000 acres of public land to mining and timber companies and real estate speculators, all in the name of funding rural schools.
In 2005, Pombo came close to realizing his wildest dream when the House of Representatives passed his bill to annihilate the Endangered Species Act by a hefty margin of 229 to 193. Soon after this mighty triumph, the Washington Times announced the onset of "Pombomania" among young Republican ultras.
...
The Sierra Club's threat inflation of Pombo almost certainly factored into Tom DeLay's decision to catapult the congressman over the heads of more senior members to the chair of the Resources Committee, one of the most prized seats in Congress.
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Feinstein [n.b. THE key oyster co. advocate] and Pombo have worked closely over the years on everything from water policy in the Central Valley (more water for farms, less for salmon) and logging in the High Sierra near Lake Tahoe.
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In 2002, Pombo went to bat for Charles Hurwitz, owner of Maxxam and infamous looter of redwoods and of Savings & Loans. Pombo and Tom Delay intimidated federal regulators into dropping an investigation of Hurwitz's banking practices. ... Hurwitz, of course, was a top contributor to Pombo's campaign war chest.
Republicans were so worried about Pombo's ethical dilemmas that they recruited an old warhorse to challenge him in the primary: Pete McCloskey.
...
Back in the 1990s, Pombo made rich sport of attacking Hillary Clinton for her role in the Travelgate affair. But it turned out that Pombo's office had its own travelrelated problems.
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In the summer of 2005, Pombo took his family on a twoweek vacation, touring the national parks in a rented RV. He sent the $5,000 bill to the Resources Committee. When Rep. Ellen Tauscher questioned the reimbursement, Pombo said he was doing research. And perhaps he was. A few weeks after he returned from his grand tour, Pombo's office leaked a white paper to the Washington Times calling on the Bush administration to sell off a dozen national parks. ... It turns out that since 2001 Pombo has paid his wife and his brother atleast $465,000 in consulting fees from his campaign fund. ... This wasn't Pombo's first infraction. In 2004, he used office funds to pay for the printing and mailing of a flier to a nationwide list of property rights fanatics urging them to write letters in support of Bush's plan to allow snowmobilers to run amok in Yellowstone Park. The Ethics Committee ruled that the flier violated the rules on franking and slashed his mail budget. Later that year, Pombo gave all of the Republican staffers on the Resources Committee a paid vacation in October so they could disperse across the country to work in GOP election campaigns--another ethical foul.
In October 2005, the Center for Public Integrity reported that Pombo had taken two overseas junkets to New Zealand and Japan. Both trips were paid for by a group called the International Foundation for Conservation of Natural Resources, which receives funding from bioengineering firms such as Monsanto and also from prowhaling interests. Pombo did not report the trip on his income tax form, though the IRS considers overseas junkets gifts on which taxes must be paid.
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This essay is excerpted from Born Under a Bad Sky: Notes from the Dark Side of the Earth by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR (AK Press, 2008)."
Pombo had no such intention.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/No-Arctic-oil-drilling-How-about-sell...
Not to mention that Richard Pombo is hardly a major figure in the Republican Party. I'll stand by my statement.
BTW - Here is the official list of his sponsored legislation. I see nothing about National Parks or selling federal lands.
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/browse?sponsor=400322#current_sta...
One of these days, we will come to realize, as does Peggy Noonan at THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (see her excellent column this morning on fighting ISIS) that the so-called leadership class is entirely out of touch with its constituents--and by that she means around the world. Europe is going under, and we are going under, by failing to recognize what needs to be done. These silly games are all a smokescreen by people who lead only from self-interest. You want to know who would sell off your public lands? Any politician who could get away with it. Look at the sweetheart deals for wind and solar, and no again, they are not being pushed by the Koch brothers. The 40 million acres of our public lands designated for green energy have been entirely pushed by the Obama Administration. The national parks? What are they, if not convenient islands in a sea of turbines and solar panels planned right up to the boundaries of the national parks. Think the Mojave National Preserve and the South Rim of Grand Canyon.
I laugh when I see Bernie Sanders flailing his arms and screaming to the sky about climate change. In the next breath his is talking about greedy Wall Street bankers. You are not supposed to see his own connections to Wall Street through his advocacy of green energy. The biggest driver of green energy is General Electric. Oh, and I suppose Senator Sanders would call them a Main-Street corporation.
Wake up and do some reading (and thinking) before you play gotcha on these blogs. EC is right. The Republicans are not your enemy, but neither are the Democrats your truest friends. History shows, as in proves, that the national parks have always had bipartisan support. That is why I never label a politician in my writing, i.e., Theodore Roosevelt (R). The Rs and Ds show nothing. Any politician can love the national parks--and any politician hate them. Or simply ignore them, is the greater point. Here in Washington State, one of our most famous Democratic senators wanted to log Olympic National Park for the union vote. By his math--and by his reckoning--the unions added up to more votes than the environmentalists. When did he switch sides? When the math changed--and not a moment before.
This year, it is again all about the math. If I can make you afraid of something, perhaps you will vote for me. But don't hope for any saviors in this bunch, either. They didn't get where they are by being truthful. They rather got where they are by playing politics. They need us to start pointing fingers so they can figure out what to say.
My two immersions in the political arena were real eye-openers, to be sure. It is a 16-hour day and a full-blown contact sport. The ones standing on the stage are the survivors. Now, go out and tell them what you want. But don't expect any of them to listen unless they know they have your vote. And while you're at it, you might give them a thousand bucks. Then they will really listen.
Alfred, interesting post. For starters Peggy Noonan has her own political viewpoint, worked for President Reagan as a special advisor. The WSJ opinion page is quite conservative, particularly now under the new ownership. Still, her column was worth the read. In any case, this is not the venue for politics, you have rasised some good points but I am not in complete agreement with them. Maybe our trails will cross sometime and we can discuss it further.
Thanks, Ron. I look forward to sitting down with you and recalling the good old days in Yosemite! Meanwhile, the late Garrett Hardin (himself a conservative) reminded his students that conservative is not a dirty name. I read THE WALL STREET JOURNAL because THE NEW YORK TIMES thinks it is. Well, they should be happy this morning now that The Bern took every county in my state. But is "free" the answer to everything? For every benefit, there still must be a payer. After we turn out the pockets of every billionaire, we will still be trillions short.
It all got away from us in the 1970s when we failed to heed the great teach-in of the 1960s. We were right; there are too many people on this planet. Now we are paying the price in every quarter. Peggy Noonan is one of the few people with the courage to say that instead of sweeping it under the rug. Even my conservative friends don't want to talk about population anymore, and that includes THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Some technological "fix" will save us. It always has and always will.
But as Garrett reminded us, there was no Wizard. Stop telling me about all of the people you are "going" to help, he would say, and tell me why you can't help them today. Stop telling me about all of the people you are "going" to feed, and tell me why the world can't end poverty today.
In any event, I am back again in Yosemite, working on a second edition of THE EMBATTLED WILDERNESS. It's great therapy talking about just 1,000 square miles instead of the entire planet. Yosemite gets me depressed enough.
Curious Alfred, what is your resolution for "too many people".
Well, EC, we used to say "Every child a wanted child." By that definition, the world birthrate would fall by half. As Mexico is proving now, the birthrate can fall dramatically when women are empowered to make a choice. Do women really want ten kids? I doubt it, but at least, if they're wanted they will be cared for. Just two days ago here in Seattle, a woman dumped her newborn off in a trash compactor. That's the extreme, but we all know what is meant by wanted and unwanted. If people don't want children, it is best they not have them, but millions continue to have them and we see the results.
In the 1960s, we could teach all of that in a sociology class and not be called on the carpet for being racist. You just want to prevent the poor from having children, Alfred. Actually, my wife and I have none of our own. We realized that there are great parents, and simply good parents. We decided that our being good parents would not be good enough. That admission, mulplied by eight billion people, should bring population growth to a halt.
But no, we are not allowed to teach choice and discipline (or limits), and so the choices the world continues to make are poor.
Thank you Alfred Runte for an excellent post on a good question by EC. Yes, "every child a wanted child", that is the position of most environmental organizations. It starts with education, at home then our high schools as well as colleges. Empowering women is critically important at all economic levels. Organizations like planned parenthood are also very important. I have a niece that works for planned parenthood, they are tough and straightforward with their patients. Yes discipline, choice, limits. I am looking forward to your new edition "Yosemite, Embattled Wilderness". Traveler will keep us posted on publication date, so we can get a copy.