The Idaho Valley Express Newpaper............

A former superintendent of the Craters of the Moon National Monument has been nominated by President Barack Obama to serve as the director of the National Park Service.

The White House announced the nomination of Jonathan Jarvis on Friday, July 10.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar praised the announcement today.

Jarvis currently is the regional director of the agency’s Pacific West Region. He was superintendent of Craters of the Moon in the 1990s.

"President Obama has made an outstanding choice for director of the National Park Service,” Salazar said in a prepared statement. "There is no substitute for experience, and Jon Jarvis has three decades of hands-on experience in our parks that will be invaluable as we seek to reinvigorate and improve our National Park System in time for its 100th anniversary in 2016."

As regional director of the Pacific West Region, Jarvis is currently responsible for the 54 units of the National Park System in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California, Nevada, Hawaii and the Pacific Islands of Guam, Saipan and American Samoa. He oversees 3,000 employees with a $350 million annual budget.

Prior to becoming regional director in 2002, Jarvis spent three years as the superintendent of Mount Rainier National Park in Ashford, Washington, where he managed the 235,000 acre National Park with a staff of 300 and a $14 million budget.

In the 1990s, Jarvis served as superintendent of Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve in Alaska.

Jarvis is a trained biologist who also served as Chief of Natural and Cultural Resources at North Cascades National Park where he was the chief biologist of the 684,000 acre complex of two recreation areas and one national park.