David Mihalic is expected to be nominated to be the next director of the National Park Service
Seven months into his administration, President Trump has yet to nominate a director for the National Park Service. But Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke does have an advisor on his team with a wealth of Park Service experience, one whose background has been investigated, leading to speculation that that individual soon will be nominated.
David Mihalic left the National Park Service on his own terms back in January 2003 rather than follow new-Park Service Director Fran Mainella's order that he move from Yosemite National Park to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. At the Smokies, the Bush administration wanted him to push through the "Road to Nowhere," an environmentally questionable highway project proposed to run through the park on the north shore of Fontana Lake, and finalize a 168-acre land swap with the Cherokee Nation that reportedly would have led to a school complex being built on the land.
The Park Service previously had opposed both those projects, and Mr. Mihalic told the The Washington Post he was concerned about "the conflicting priorities which I would face."
When Ms. Mainella declined to discuss his concerns, and after being told no other assignment would be offered, he submitted his retirement papers.
''I keep the mission of the Park Service on the back of my name tag so that I can always remember,'' Mr. Mihalic told The New York Times late in 2002, shortly before leaving the Park Service. ''It says we are supposed to keep these places unimpaired for future generations.''
After retiring at the seemingly young age of 56, Mr. Mihalic returned to Montana, where he once had been superintendent of Glacier National Park, and focused on painting landscapes and, for a short time, dabbled in politics in 2004 as a running mate of gubernatorial candidate Pat Davison.
Speed forward to December 2016, and Mr. Mihalic's embrace of Ryan Zinke, a fellow Montanan and friend, for Interior secretary was quickly evident.
"I think Mr. Zinke is a brilliant pick for secretary of the Interior. Sure, he’s a Montana sportsman, but his college degrees in both geology and an MBA are perfect for the department that manages both responsible development and public use of our nation’s natural resources while protecting their natural and cultural values,” Mr. Mihalic told the Billings Gazette. "He knows and is unequivocal about federal management of our public lands, our treasured national parks, and wildlife refuges. And, his votes in Congress against his own party’s position on proposed federal land transfers and reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund shows he can work across the aisle with Democrats on important conservation issues.”
Not long after Mr. Zinke was confirmed earlier this year, he brought Mr. Mihalic on as a special advisor, a role soon rumored to be an on-deck position for his nomination as Park Service director. It wasn't a very well-kept rumor; after Secretary Zinke toured Kathadin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine as part of his review of 27 national monuments designated since 1996, he stopped in Boston to meet with Park Service staff and told them Mr. Mihalic would be their next director.
Interior spokeswoman Heather Swift demurred when asked earlier this year who Secretary Zinke would recommend for the job, saying only that a name had been submitted to the White House for consideration.
The relevant House committees have been doing background checks on Mr. Mihalic, though the staff of U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, declined comment last week when asked if the congressman had any concerns about Mr. Mihalic's background.
One individual contacted as part of the background check was asked about Mr. Mihalic's management style and whether it was harsh or brusque, but had no firsthand knowledge of that. Others who know the man have praised his managerial talents.
In that December 2002 story about his impending retirement, The New York Times wrote that "Mr. Milahic had a reputation for working magic more bluntly, for knocking heads and getting the seemingly impossible done."
So, who is David Mihalic?
- He had a long Park Service career, launched in 1972 as a seasonal ranger at Glacier National Park, that saw him eventually rise through the ranks to serve as superintendent at a number of parks, including Mammoth Cave, Glacier, Yosemite, and Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve.
- In 1993, he received the Park Service's Superintendent of the Year award for his work on protecting natural resources at Mammoth Cave.
- A year later, he was superintendent at Glacier, where he generated no small amount of consternation by drafting a General Management Plan that, among other options, proposed closing some roads and campgrounds and limiting access along the Going-to-the-Sun Road. That prompted then-U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, to amend the Interior Department's appropriations bill to require that any GMP for Glacier would require congressional approval, something the senator said at the time was "a final line of defense against illogical or unresponsive decision-making by the National Park Service."
- Shortly after his arrival at Yosemite as superintendent late in 1999, Mr. Mihalic told the Yosemite Association in an interview that he didn't view the park as too crowded. "People aren't the problem. If we've somehow gotten to the point that we think the visitor is the problem, then we need to reexamine our own view of what our job is," he said, adding that he wouldn't support limiting visitation. "... Quotas imply that people are a problem. If we say, 'Well a few people are okay, but multitudes of people a not,' it gets a little bit closer to the issue, which isn't overcrowding but experience. It might be, when visitation gets to a certain point, that too many people impinge upon the experience. But everybody has a different idea of what that point is. The tolerance level of people is different, and there is no magic number that says at this particular point it's too many people and at this point it's not."
- In 2013, along with former Yosemite superintendents Robert Binnewies and B.J. Griffin, Mr. Mihalic wrote an op-ed piece saying the Hetch Hetchy Valley of Yosemite should be drained so the Park Service could "heal the greatest blemish in all our national parks. ... A century ago, our nation sought to tame the wilderness with large-scale engineering projects, occasionally with destructive results. Today, we should commit to undoing one of the worst examples of that destruction. And tomorrow, we can watch a magnificent valley emerge from the depths," they wrote.
- Last summer, Mr. Mihalic, along with Mr. Zinke, then Montana's congressman, and Dale Bosworth, former chief of the U.S. Forest Service, wrote an op-ed concerning wildland fires. In it, they maintained that the public landscape in the West didn't have a fire problem, per se, but rather a land-management problem. "Today, (President Theodore) Roosevelt's conservation ethic is in jeopardy as special interests, endless litigation, and political gridlock threaten proven best practices, balanced use, and common sense while tying the hands of our resource professionals. The result is catastrophic wildland fires, destruction of critical habitat, management decisions made by lawyers, and the loss of millions of dollars in local revenue that funds schools, infrastructure, and preservation," they wrote. "What is needed to restore the conservation ethic is better management by resource professionals, greater collaboration with citizens, and increased investment in our public lands."
- This past June, during an appearance before the Outdoor Writers Association of America, he shed little light on Secretary Zinke's approach to public lands management, saying he didn't know why the secretary ended a ban on lead shot and fishing tackle, didn't know what his views were on President Trump's directive that he review the propriety of 27 national monuments, and didn't know why the secretary withdrew 17 sites in the country from the UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves program.
Those who know him say Mr. Mihalic is concerned about low morale across the National Park Service, but how he would reverse that and how he would react to various administration moves, such as the goal of reducing the Park Service staff by some 1,200 employees and cutting its annual budget by nearly $400 million, and downsizing the agency's headquarters and regional staff to redirect resources to the park level, are unknown.
A Traveler request this past week to interview Mr. Mihalic was declined.
Comments
The key word here remains the "downgrade." If a "downgrade," what were the politics? You mean to say there were none? In the past, GS-15s were considered "vulnerable" when presidential administrations in fact were changed. By making the Chief Historian's position a GS-14, again, why would the president bother?
Universities are doing this, too. In the past, a named chair always went to a distinguished scholar with a national or international reputation. Now these "reputations," too, are being "made." The publicity department manufactures a "record" allowing a lesser scholar to take the post. The politics there, "affirmative action," allow the university to claim distinction when there is none.
The Park Service is kidding itself that the scholarly community doesn't know what happened with the Chief Historian's position. But yes, let's all kid ourselves that history matters. Now, whose statue can we target next? I see that Gettysburg National Military Park has the Virginia Monument astride the slopes of Seminary Ridge. Hey, isn't that Robert E. Lee up there? Why not "downgrade" him, as well.
http://gettysburg.stonesentinels.com/confederate-monuments/confederate-s...
You think a GS-14 Chief Historian is going to defend the nation's history? How? As a "downgrade" she has no authority to mix it up in the political world. That's a "political appointee," in my opinion, since that was the intent. No record, i.e., no basis for authority. Now history, which is half the Park Service, is left to flounder on the winds of political correctness, since that was the intent, as well.
From my experience with his leadership, as Superintendent of Yosemite National Park, Dave Mihalic does not have the personality, management style or temperament suitable to provide the necessary and thoughtful leadership required of the Director of the National Park Service. His tenure at Yosemite created what felt like a hostile work environment for employees and volunteers alike. Our parks, our citizens and the fine people who lead and care for our national parks deserve more.
Christy Holloway
Yosemite Association Board Chair 200-2010
Well, Christy, it sounds like he'll be a perfect match for Drumpf's misadministration.
The new GS 14 Chief Historian has no power or ability to promote the role of history within the National Park Service. She has no record of accomplishment. The new Chief historian is nothing but a pale shadow of the men who proceeded her in this position. Her appointment is a sad reminder of how far the professional standards of the National Park Service have fallen. The office is nothing but a pale shadow of what is was a generation ago. The sad fact about this no one even cares.
I too endured Dave's reign of terror as Superintendent and share Christy's assessment of his qualifications. I wouldn't give much credibility to his conservation cred either - keep in mind the Yosemite /Smokies story was Dave's own uncorroborated spin on his ouster from Yosemite.
Record of accomplishment? Other than Bob Utley (and maybe Chatelaine in his day) no Chief Historian has made significant contributions to the wider field. The job is mostly about setting internal priorities and administration.
The men who held the position before Low were primarily military historians and most of them Civil War historians. I guess since she doesn't come from the cannon ball fluffer crowd, that's makes her a "shadow."