Multiple sources say the nomination of Jon Jarvis as the next director of the National Park Service will be announced in the very near future.

The nomination of Mr. Jarvis, currently head of the agency's Pacific West regional office, has cleared the White House and only the delicacy of political timing remains before it is publicly announced, the Traveler has learned.

Official word of Mr. Jarvis's selection has been pending since mid-April, when Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told those at a staff meeting that he had settled on the regional director for the job.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Mr. Jarvis will take the reins of an agency with roughly 20,000 employees, a maintenance and operations backlog pegged at somewhere between $8 billion and $9 billion, and facing such politically charged issues as guns in the parks, snowmobiles in Yellowstone, and how to confront climate change in the parks.

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."