A fine pick for Park Service.

Byline: The Register-Guard

President Obama has appointed Jon Jarvis to lead the National Park Service. It's a name that is comfortingly familiar in the Northwest. Jarvis is a 30-year, battle-tested veteran who is well prepared to confront the agency's many and complex challenges.

As the Park Service approaches its 100th anniversary in 2016, its 391 parks are suffering from neglect and budget cuts. Visitors encounter deteriorating roads and buildings, outdated displays and inadequately maintained trails and campgrounds.

The number of visitors to national parks has declined over the past decade - from 286 million in 2000 to 275 million last year. Before 1990 the average American used to visit a national park at least once a year. That's no longer true, and per capita park visitation is at its lowest level since 1975.

The Bush administration's retrograde park policies - from increasing the number of snowmobiles allowed in iconic Yellowstone National Park to allowing visitors to carry loaded guns - have taken a toll on employee morale. Climate change is melting glaciers and altering ecosystems in national parks. With many in the service's aging work force approaching retirement, Jarvis will have to recruit and train a new generation of employees to deal with a new and evolving set of challenges.

Jarvis has an impressive rsum. Since 2002 he has been director of the Park Service's Pacific West region, which includes 54 parks and programs in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, California, Hawaii and the Pacific islands.

Previously, he was superintendent of Mount Rainier National Park and the chief biologist of the North Cascades National Park in Washington state.

He is no stranger to controversy. Jarvis made few friends in the Bush administration by arguing that national parks should prepare for climate change and opposing snowmobiling in Yellowstone. He publicly opposed efforts to rewrite the agency's management plan to shift the balance between conservation and recreation and loosen controls on commercial activities.

Jarvis also has tangled with Democrats, most notably Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in a controversy over the environmental effects of a Northern California oyster farm and its potential relicensing.

Feinstein criticized Jarvis for his handling of a dispute between the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. and the Park Service over environmental harm to the bay where Sir Francis Drake landed more than 400 years ago. After a National Academy of Sciences panel concluded that the agency had selectively presented information and misrepresented facts, Jarvis apologized for any errors but did not retreat from the conclusion that the oyster farming has adverse effects on the estuary.

Jarvis will benefit from an unprecedented infusion of $750 million in federal stimulus funds that will help restore and protect national parks across the country, including Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. But the Park Service still faces an $8 billion backlog in repair, restoration and rehabilitation projects.

Jarvis should consider the example of a predecessor, former parks Director Conrad Wirth, who in 1956 began a 10-year project called "Mission 66" to prepare a then similarly neglected park system for its 50-year anniversary.

With seven years left before the system's 100th birthday, there's plenty of time left for a major centennial initiative, one that enlists volunteers and contributors from all parts of America and all walks of life - and that can ensure that the nation's 391 parks are fully restored and ready for a birthday party.