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...Jarvis decided to turn the speech
into a book to sell during 2016, the national parks’ centennial,
believing his positive message could help the parks better resonate with
increasingly diverse future generations. But that’s where his trouble
started. He assumed the book wouldn’t be approved through official
channels in time, so he quietly found his own publisher, a Park Service
concessioner. His boss, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, learned about
the unauthorized book only when he sent her a copy of Guidebook to American Values and our National Parks.
That kicked off an investigation by
Interior’s Office of Inspector General, or OIG. In February, Jarvis was
reprimanded for unacceptable behavior and ethics violations relating to
the publication. The incident has resurrected earlier criticism of
Jarvis’ leadership of the agency he has headed for nearly seven years.
Another, unrelated OIG investigation,
released in January, revealed a long-term pattern of sexual harassment
and misconduct at the Grand Canyon, the very park where Jarvis wrote the
original speech that inspired his book. The scandals have tarnished
both the message that Jarvis wants to highlight for the parks’ 100th
birthday and the conclusion to his own 40-year career at the agency.
(Jarvis plans to retire at the end of the Obama administration.)
“These incidents have cast the agency
in a negative light at a time when we should be celebrating what
Wallace Stegner told us was the best idea we ever had,” says Mark
Squillace, a professor at University of Colorado Law School, who twice
worked in the Interior Department’s solicitor’s office.
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