Glacier Park: Many issues confront new park leader

Glacier National Park Superintendent Jeff Mow was installed in his new job this week, just in time to begin tangling with park funding issues that could arise as a looming debt ceiling deadline approaches in Congress.

“Obviously, we’re going to have to wrestle with next fiscal year’s budget,” Mow said when asked by the Inter Lake editorial board about what has his immediate attention.

He added that park staffs across the country must contend with the uncertainty of what will transpire in Congress for National Park Service funding.

“We just don’t know where we will be at. It’s all up in the air,” said Mow, a 25-year Park Service veteran who spent the last nine years as superintendent at Kenai Fjords National Park in Alaska.

National Parks absorbed $180 million in cuts this year, largely due to the sequester spending reductions mandated by Congress. Parks were instructed to cut 5 percent early this year, which led to shortened seasons and hours at campgrounds and other park facilities, among other reductions in discretionary spending.

According to the National Parks Conservation Association, discretionary spending is 22 percent — or about $700 million in today’s dollars — less than it was a decade ago.

The nonprofit park advocacy organization contends that sequester-type spending cuts have an indiscriminate impact that could be avoided. The total budget for national parks is 1/15th of 1 percent of the total U.S. budget, yet parks are enormous economic engines that benefit the government as well as the communities that surround them, according to the group.

Yet Mow and his staff will have to manage with whatever they are dealt, and it can be challenging, he said.

Mow said Glacier’s new partnership with the fledgling Glacier National Conservancy is exciting, with the potential to provide supplemental funding for projects and programs.

“We think that’s going to be an important component of our funding,” Mow said of the conservancy. But he added that the nonprofit partner should never be expected to pay for routine park operations and basic obligations to the public.

Mow said he finds the park’s relationship with surrounding communities and its jurisdictional relationships with Forest Service, the Blackfeet Reservation and Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada to be unique and interesting. He was scheduled to attend the annual hands-across-the-border event commemorating the Glacier-Waterton International Peace Park during the latter part of the week.

He said he was immediately impressed with how widespread Glacier’s constituency is and how passionate park supporters can be.

“The interest in this park is just phenomenal compared to what I witnessed and experienced in Alaska,” he said.

On issues such as an upcoming Going-to-the-Sun Road corridor study, aquatic invasive species and the transition to a new park concessions contractor, Mow is still getting his feet wet.

“I feel like I’m still absorbing a lot. Kym Hall has done an amazing job as acting superintendent,” he said, adding that Hall has been helpful in his transition.

While in Alaska, Mow was active in Rotary Club and emergency services and he intends to be active in the Flathead community as well.

He said it is important for park personnel to not just be neighbors but to be active in the community.

Mow and his wife and teenage son are living in Whitefish, and so far he has been able to go on a couple of hikes in the park and float the North Fork Flathead River.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by email at jmann@dailyinterlake.com.