For the Parks, a Good Friend

The National Park System will have a good friend as its steward when California’s William Penn Mott assumes command as director of the National Park Service. Mott, from the Oakland area, has spent more than half a century as a custodian and guardian of local, state and national parklands. His distinguished career includes 13 years with the National Park Service during the 1930s and 1940s, and eight years as California state parks director under Gov. Ronald Reagan.

Mott’s appointment by Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel brought an enthusiastic response from conservation groups most closely associated with the nation’s parks program. “He will be a real asset to the national parks,” said Clay Peters of the Wilderness Society. And Destry Jarvis of the National Parks and Conservation Assn. noted, “We are absolutely pleased. For the first time in this Administration, the Park Service will have the clout within the Administration and outside to compete for its own priorities.”

Jarvis’ point is an important one. Russell E. Dickenson, a career Park Service official, did a commendable job during President Reagan’s first term, but he was handicapped by working under a secretary of Interior whose idea of park stewardship, and usage, often clashed with the Park Service’s traditional role of conservation and preservation. As an up-from-the-ranks director, Dickenson did not always have the political freedom needed to be an independent and outspoken advocate of the parks.

Mott, too, will have to work within the Interior chain of command. But if it was a choice between his political career and the well-being of the National Park System, we have no doubt where he would stand. He seemed to persuade Gov. Reagan of the need for a growing and aggressive state park system, and he is in a position now to persuade President Reagan that the nation’s most popular parks face pressures and damages from civilization that need to be dealt with on an urgent basis.

“The parks themselves are in physical jeopardy,” David Graber, a Park Service scientist, wrote recently.

Up to now, the Administration has been more concerned with the state of the parks’ public facilities like roads, sewer and water systems and concession stands. Now is the time to invest some energy and caring into the forests, mountains, seashores, streams, meadows and wildlife--the reasons the parks were created in the first place. Bill Mott is a good choice as caretaker.