Discovery 2000: The National Park Service General Conference
By Kevin Schneider

Reprinted from The Arrowhead (Vol. 7 No. 3, Summer 2000)

At the beginning of the twentieth century, five national parks, all located in the west, represented the infancy of the national park idea. The National Park Service had not yet even been created. Today, the National Park Service cares for 379 diverse areas ranging halfway around the world and manages programs that touch the lives of millions of Americans. Today we not only protect spectacular natural areas, but also help preserve the very fabric of our nation's history and our quality of life.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the National Park Service must reflect on its role within our American society for the future. Few could have foreseen the breadth of issues the parks face today. What new challenges will the twenty-first century bring? How will today's revolutions and tomorrow's unforeseen wonders change our culture? The traditions of the National Park Service are renown, but how can we make them just as relevant to the twenty-first century as they were to the twentieth?

To help answer these questions, over 1,300 National Park Service leaders, partners, and scholars have been invited to come together in St. Louis this September at Discovery 2000: The National Park Service General Conference. The conference will focus the vision of the Park Service for the twenty-first century, while cultivating new leadership ready to meet the challenges of the future. Discovery 2000 will be the first nationwide NPS conference since the 75th anniversary conference, held in Vail, Colorado, in 1991 (which produced the Vail Agenda).

The goals of Discovery 2000 are:

• To develop a vision of the National Park Service's 21st century role in the life of the nation.
• To inspire and invigorate the Service, its partners, and the public about this vision.
• To develop new leadership to meet the challenges of the future.

The conference will feature four daily program tracks covering cultural resources stewardship, natural resources stewardship, education, and leadership. Each morning, a nationally recognized keynote speaker will address the conference on topics related to the day's track. Centered around the day's program tracks are a series of instructive lectures, off-site workshops, and in-depth dialogues that explore future scenarios and how the service might best deal with them. These sessions are designed to provoke and challenge participants on critically important topics, while producing visionary thinking that will guide the service for several decades.

The track on cultural resources will begin with a keynote address by Dr. John Hope Franklin, a legendary figure among American historians. Dr. Franklin holds the Presidential Medal of Freedom and is the newly appointed Chair of the National Park System Advisory Board. The cultural resource track will examine how America preserves its cultural resource heritage while connecting it to a diverse and constantly changing society. Sample sessions include, "Places of the Spirit: Can Sacred Places Survive our Good Intentions?"; "Whose Archeology is it Anyway?"; and "Widening the Circle: Cultural Bias in America's Preservation Public Policy."

Dr. Edward O. Wilson, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Diversity of Life and The Theory of Island Biogeography, will address the track on natural resources. Dr. Wilson is acclaimed as one of the world's most credible advocates of protecting the planet's biodiversity and was named by Time magazine as one of the 25 most influential people in the nation. The natural resources sessions will explore controversial issues such as technology's influence on parks and the role of science in park management. Sessions include, "Protecting Resources from Ourselves"; "The Test: What is Impaired"; and "Resources First: Arriving at Sustainable Levels of Visitor Use."

America's most distinguished contemporary poet, Maya Angelou, will kick off the track on education. Ms. Angelou composed and delivered a poem at President Clinton's inauguration and is the author of the best selling autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The education track will focus on ways we can offer a lifelong interactive education by serving as repositories of the things which define our heritage. Among the sessions offered are, "Spirituality, Sacredness, and Resource Stewardship"; "Future Smarts"; and "Virtual Visits: Is it Really Necessary to Visit the Place?"

Dr. Peter Senge, a world-renowned expert on leadership, will usher in the leadership track. Dr. Senge originated the concept of "the Learning Organization," which is helping drive the reinvigoration of corporate America today. A senior lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Senge is also a board member of The Natural Step, an international organization dedicated to making sustainability and sound environmental practices part of "the bottom line" for private enterprises. Some leadership sessions are: "Dream Makers: Vision and Leadership"; "Philanthropy and the National Parks"; and "Leadership Beyond Park Boundaries."

You can follow along with Discovery 2000 by visiting the conference web site, which will allow "Virtual Participants" to receive up to the minute information about the conference. Remarks by the keynote speakers, summaries of the sessions, the daily conference newsletter, and streaming media will be continuously posted throughout the conference. Conference registrants should also periodically check the web site for updates, announcements, schedule changes, and other information. Discovery 2000 online is: www.nps.gov/discovery2000.

Horace Albright, in his farewell letter to National Park Service employees, wrote, "Do not let the service become 'just another Government bureau;' keep it youthful, vigorous, clean and strong...With this spirit each of us is an integral part of the preservation of the magnificent heritage we have been given, so that centuries from now people of our world...may see and understand what is unique to our earth, never changing, eternal." Albright's vision was always more advanced and more encompassing than most people even yet understand. Discovery 2000 dares each of us to look, Albright-like, into the twenty-first century, to anticipate its tests and to perceive its opportunities.

Kevin Schneider is a writer-editor at Yellowstone National Park and is part of the communications team for Discovery 2000.