Closing Plenary:
Beyond Discovery 2000

The National Park Service of Tomorrow: Vision, Challenge, and Exhortation
Robert Stanton
Director, National Park Service
Friday, September 15, 11:00 am

"He or she is a better citizen with a keener appreciation of the privileges of living here in the United States who has toured the national parks".

--Stephen Mather, First Director, National Park Service

Good morning.

My friends and fellow citizens.

Please permit me at the outset to thank and commend each of you for your participation and contributions to this outstanding conference -- again my deepest appreciation to general conference chair, Jerry Rogers, the natural resources, cultural resources, education, and leadership co-chairs, track leaders conference committee, former directors, the outstanding speakers and sponsors -- thank you, thank you. Let me offer a very special thanks to Jim Gasser for an extraordinary fine job!!

Superintendent Gary Easton -- you and your staff have my everlasting gratitude. You have made us all proud for all that you have done to make this conference such a great success -- Gary, please convey to Mayor Harmon our appreciation for his support and the many courtesies extended by the city.

My friends, we are poised on the edge of a future in the shadow of the timeless arch of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and its invitation to possibility. It is our generation's turn to march through that arch of optimism. The end of this conference is just beginning for the 21t century National Park Service. Getting here has been a long journey -- for me, as for many of you -- but that long journey has only brought us to the starting line. That is not self-contradictory -- it was intentional.

The people of the world of parks and parklike places are among the most public spirited and dedicated in the world. Park and preservation work is motivated by goals and objectives unlike those of many fields. Our measures of labor and reward are different, too.

We come to this work because we want to make a difference -- a difference for the better. You who are here and indeed, those who are in the parks and offices doing our work while we are here, came in hopes of nudging the bow, altering the course, not radically, but quietly, to a straighter, truer course.

This course was chosen to achieve important strategic goals geared toward enhancing our environmental leadership and accountability to the American people. We established three -- so interrelated that to describe them we used the familiar image of the three-legged stool. Three goals that had to be of the same height and strength, and all had to be done simultaneously, in order for the stool to stand. Those three legs -- three goals -- were:

1. To get the National Park Service better understood by the American people, our partners and ourselves;
2. A reconstituted National Park System Advisory Board; and
3. A forward-looking conference that we had not yet begun to call Discovery 2000.

If we needed to claim accomplishments, we could today claim all of those. The Message Project is launched, with the energy and financial support of the National Park Foundation. A newly vigorous National Park System Advisory Board is up and running, and is characterized by scholarship and accomplishment of the highest order, with Dr. John Hope Franklin at its helm. And I think every person here will agree that Discovery 2000 has met the goal of being forward-looking and visionary. We could claim today that the three-legged stool has been completed, that it stands, that it is balanced, and that it is strong.

But focus on the things that have been done misses the point. The future isn't in what we have done, but in what we must do and where we must go. The work of the world of parks and parklike places is never done. We have a monumental obligation to the future. If any action brings risk, then inaction brings a bigger risk. It is our duty to point the way in this new millennium. The job will go on long after we have departed the stage. But the direction it goes will be determined in very important ways by what we do! It has been said it is not so great where you are but rather the direction in which you are going.

Parks are about preservation, of course, but what they preserve is the foundation of what will come. They have been chosen in a variety of ways to represent the legacy of a nation and her people. They have been chosen to help us understand what has worked, what has not worked and what has possibilities to work.

We have been handed a great trust for all people. We then must embrace a similar role with our own people. As a federal agency, we have an obligation to be a model employer, but we cannot be a model employer without improving our work force diversity. We shall take that obligation seriously. Very seriously.

Diversity in the work place values employees in all occupations and at all levels and provides them with opportunities for working at their full potential. But it is essential that diversity focuses on inclusion -- not exclusion. Having diversity at all of our areas and offices includes the representation of those groups who are absent now -- but it means supplementing, not sacrificing the talents of those already present.

Diversity encompasses more than differences in race, ethnic national origin, disabilities, age, gender, religion or sexual orientation. It includes the different values, cultures, and perspectives possessed by the ever-changing mix of groups that comprise America. Diversity is a catalyst for developing and maintaining a more competitive and effective work force. We must understand and respect the viewpoints and ideas that are unfamiliar in our personal experience and our personal heritage.

As a leading resource management organization, it is our challenge to:

• Preserve certain places unimpaired forever;
• To keep the ever-growing and validly changing social memory of a nation;
• To provide places and facilities in which people can re-create both their body, mind and their spirit;
• To maintain and improve the quality of life of every American;
• To sustain and rebuild the fragile ecology of a battered planet;
• To join in creative cooperation with every person and every organization who shares these values -- these challenges must always be daunting.

In turn, "daunting" can be paralyzing or it can be energizing. Today we choose to be energized!

So in our line of work, my friends, our real accomplishments are always just ahead of us -- always in the future. What we've done must always be seen as milestones, not as the finish line.

Ultimate success in our field is something none of us will ever live to see. And neither will generations upon generations of our successors. In our work, the only ultimate outcome that humans could ever live to see is what we must never allow to happen -- ultimate failure. Success, during our temporary stewardship, lies in keeping the struggle going, increasing the numbers of people and nations who are engaged in it, improving the quality with which we carry it on, and adapting to the ever-new circumstances and meanings in a changing America -- indeed a changing world.

That is the situation today with our three goals. The Message Project, and "Experience Your America" can help us to increase the number of people who are engaged in our struggle, but getting the project to this stage is simply a beginning.

The National Park System Advisory Board now sparkles with talent, but its benefits to the service lie almost entirely in the future. And Discovery 2000 has given us visions, but the accomplishments in pursuit of those visions lie ahead.

We will close the conference today but the spirit and purpose will continue. We must extract from this conference and the things that follow it a clear, coherent vision that can be stated with understandable simplicity, and that will have a reasonable consensus behind it. That, however, is not for today; it is in the future. But at this time, I ask that you:

• Go forth from here, not with the answers to all of our questions, but with new insights -- and especially new energy -- for the examination of questions.
• Go forth with determination to share what you have gained here with others.
• Go forth resolved to replace the limitations of a cultural mindset that limited input to those at the pinnacles of authority. Replace them with a more mature, inclusive culture values every aspect of work.
• Go forth in heightened awareness that the new America of a new century is upon us, and that to deal with it we must renew ourselves just to keep pace!

I do expect refinement of the work of this conference, and that it will lead to explicit statements of vision. Statements that I hope may be useful to the next three or four or five directors in setting their strategic directions for the National Park Service.

The Discovery 2000 team will pursue follow-up activities, as will the National Leadership Council. I hope that many other conferences over the next few months -- meetings of park rangers, interpreters, facilities managers, biologists, U.S. Park Police, historians, partners, planners, architects, human resource and equal opportunity managers, superintendents, and others, will employ and improve the Discovery 2000 approach.

The National Park System Advisory Board is already launched upon an in-depth examination of the future roles of the National Park Service, and preservation of the National Park System, the National Trail System and the National Wild and Scenic River System. Most of the board members have been present this week as participants in Discovery 2000. I assure you that the work of this week will go into that great study.

Furthermore, with the benefits gained from this conference, we will continue our critical examination and improvements of our organizational and budget capacity to meet our challenge for the 21st century. Most certainly we will, in keeping with the requirements of the Government Performance and Results Act, achieve the most sound strategic plan possible. The foundation of this plan for the next five years will reflect our commitment to the interpretation and education plan -- (connecting parks to people) -- the Natural Resource Challenge, our Diversity Action Plan, the Cultural Resource Challenge and the Workforce Challenge. I am pleased to announce that both the Cultural Resource Challenge and the Workforce Challenge, which are in draft form, have been distributed for review. For your convenience, a copy of the cultural resource challenge is available for each of you this morning. Please pick up a copy as you exit. Please review and provide your comments via e-mail to Associate Director Kate Stevenson no later than October 13. Of course, please feel free to contact Kate or Pat Tiller, her deputy, if you have any questions.

We came here to begin a century and a millennium. We came here to define, and redefine our understanding and commitment to excellence. To this end, let me share with you a few principles and goals -- ideas not entirely developed at this conference, but certainly enhanced by it.

Based on my career-long experience, my interaction with you over the years, and this conference, these principles and goals are my vision, if you will, for the National Park Service and are embodied in the fabric of my very being and are the way in which I think about you, about the National Park Service and our responsibilities to the American public. Please allow me a moment to share these thoughts with you -- and here, my friends, I will choose my words carefully and mean each word I utter:

• I see a National Park Service where every employee irrespective of occupational category, organization, or geographic location will have the opportunity to develop to his/her fullest potential and where his/her contributions to the mission of the National Park Service are recognized and valued.
• I see a National Park Service where every employee will respect and value each area in the National Park System, National Trail System and National Wild and Scenic River System as an equal member in the mosaic of our rich and diverse cultural, natural and recreational heritage.
• I see a National Park Service that will be the principal leader in everything it does and assists and inspires others. Through that leadership the good works of the Service and its partners will extend to every part of our country.
• I see a National Park Service whose quality will erase, rather than emphasize, barriers between it and other federal agencies, tribes, states, local governments, communities, and the private sector.
• I see a National Park Service that will use the power of its traditions of excellence in stewardship and public service and its popularity with the public for the benefit of everyone who is engaged in any part of our greater mission. We are, after all, the guardians of legacy. And a legacy hidden is effectively, a legacy lost. It must be shared to be kept.
• I see a National Park Service that works cooperatively and collaboratively with all those other colleagues that are engaged in preservation, conservation and recreation programs.
• I see a National Park Service when we have the right mixture between preservation and use on each part of this great land, and where our public debates can move beyond the extremes of no use and overuse, and between only preservation and no preservation. In presenting these special places to the public, we must endeavor to connect people to parks for the purpose of creating memorable experiences, preserving our shared heritage, and promoting stewardship.
• I see a National Park Service and circles of partners that can serve the increasingly diversity of the America of tomorrow with the same quality that has marked its service to the traditional constituencies of yesteryear. And which true diversity will be employed in everything we do -- and not just because it is the right thing to do, but because it is the most productive course of action. In this rapidly changing nation, friends, any other alternative is simply not acceptable!
• I see a National Park Service and circles of partners that use all of their places and powers -- and the power of their places -- to share with as many people as possible the insights people need in order to understand how to sustain successful democracies, and how to sustain human life on this planet. We must play the educational roles that our people need us to play and that our resources enable us to play. One of our greatest accomplishments as a nation, it seems to me, is that we have come to recognize that our legacy is about learning and teaching, helping our children, grandchildren, and each other, to find a better life and a better place. In the inspiring words of Dr. Mary Mcleod Bethune: "I leave you, finally, a responsibility to our people. The world around us really belongs to youth, for youth will take over its future management. Our children must never lose their zeal for building a better world." We shall continue to significantly increase the participation of our youth in programs of the National Park Service. Of everything handed down to us, nothing is as important to pass on in our legacy than that same reputation for truth and reality. It is at once the most precious and the most fragile of the treasures in our hands. In Samuel Taylor Coleridge's great poem, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, at one point the mariner says: "The moment that his face I see, I know the man that must hear me: to him my tale I teach."
• I see leadership of, in, and by the National Park Service that will be based upon service rendered by leaders rather than to leaders -- leadership that derives from quality of service rather than from vested authority. A situation in which leadership is recognized not as the accumulation of power, status, or glory but as the creation of environments in which others can succeed. To this end, we must better educate our employees, visitors, park neighbors, educators, civic, government and business leaders about the places, values and resources of the National Park System.
• I see a National Park Service and circle of partners that are so respected by U.S. Presidents and U.S. Secretaries of State that they become active instruments of American diplomacy, so that this nation, as well as the National Park Service, can lead through service to others.
• And I see a National Park Service and circles of partners in perfect symbiotic relationship, mutually supporting, and working together covering every detail of our great combined missions. And doing so not for the good of our organizations, but for the good of preservation of the resource and service to the public to which we are dedicated.
• And I see a National Park Service and circles of partners that thirty years from now will still be engaged in learning. One that will be engaged in continuing dialogues about some of the very subjects we have covered this week. We must not seed permanent answers to our questions, but rather the wisdom to thing anew, time and time again.

Whether what I see for the National Park Service is fully shared by you or not -- please leave here with vision, and begin now to align your vision, and begin now to align your strategic goals, your plans, and your everyday actions with your vision.

Now let me conclude with the hope that each of you will share the learning and insights that you have gained here this week with your colleagues in your respective workplaces, organizations, and communities. Moreover, I ask that you take the lessons learned an apply them in your day-to-day work -- and fully understand and appreciate that you are a valued employee of the National Park Service or member of our circle of friends.

Permit me to share with you the wisdom of Mr. Douglass, my Mr. Frederick Douglass: "Let me offer you a word on social reform -- all progress is born of earnest struggle -- for those who profess freedom and depreciate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground -- the ocean without the mighty roar of its water, or rain without lighting and thunder. Where there's no struggle there is no progress."

In other words, Mr. Douglass reminds us that the accomplishment of any just cause requires work -- hard work -- day in, day out; indeed the preservation of our rich and diverse heritage resources is such a noble cause. Let us then, my friends, keep our hands on the plow as we climb beyond the foothills to the mountaintop.

In closing and with great pleasure and humble recognition of what we have accomplished this week -- I want to wish each of you the very best in your continued success and applaud you on your stellar work, stewardship and cooperation. I salute each of you in the word of the young president who led our country when I first entered my career as an employee of the National Park Service in June 1962 at Grand Teton National Park, and it was this same president who signed legislation authorizing the Frederick Douglass home as a unit of the National Park System in September 1962 -- so in a real sense Mr. Douglass and I joined the National Park Service in the same year -- "I am certain that when the dust of centuries has past over our cities we, too, will be remembered, not for victories or defeats in battles or politics but rather for our contributions to the human spirit." -- President John F. Kennedy.

Thank you my friends for your contributions.

Safe journey home!