NPS director Jarvis visits Yosemite

Appointing Yosemite National Park’s next superintendent is among the top priorities of newly confirmed National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis.

Jarvis, who began his tenure as director on Oct. 2, visited the park Saturday with U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, who was making his first official visit to Yosemite.
 

They met informally with Yosemite personnel and others involved with the park after hiking in Cook’s Meadow with students and Park Ranger Shelton Johnson, who presented his award-winning Buffalo Soldier Program.

Johnson was prominently featured in the Ken Burns film, “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.”

Jarvis said he hopes to appoint Yosemite’s new superintendent very soon.

Dave Uberuaga has been acting superintendent since Jan. 4, replacing Mike Tollefson, who retired to become president of the Yosemite Fund, a nonprofit agency that raises money for the park.

Uberuaga is superintendent of Mount Rainier National Park in Washington. His deputy is serving as its acting superintendent there while Uberuaga is stationed in California.

When asked how he views the philosophical battle between people who want national parks developed for public access and those who want to protect them as pristine wilderness areas, Jarvis said that he doesn’t see a conflict between the two.

“I have never bought into the conflict concept,” he said. “The national parks are set aside for the people. They belong to the people, and as long as we educate them about what they can and cannot do if they want to protect the parks, and we provide ways for them to see and enjoy them without destroying them, there is no conflict.”

He said Yosemite is doing that already, with such things as walkways through pristine meadows.

Jarvis, a biologist, has spent more than 30 years with the National Park Service, the last seven as its Oakland-based regional director.   

Ken Salazar is the nation’s 50th Secretary of the Interior. A former Colorado senator and attorney general, he has also served as head of the Department of Natural Resources in Colorado, and is a fifth-generation rancher and farmer.

He said the country has major challenges ahead as it faces global climate change and the need for conservation.

“My goal for the 21st century is to embrace a legacy of conservation,” he said. “Yes, we are in a time of crisis, with two wars and our worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, but it has been during these kinds of times before that some of our greatest conservation efforts have happened.”