Thats npclive. Now its time to introduce our head table guests. Id ask that each of you stand briefly as your name is announced. Please hold your applause until i have finished introducing the entire table. From your right, dylan brown, a reporter from E E Publishing; gene tighe, director of bbn technologies, and a Longtime National park volunteer; maria recio, a correspondent from mcclatchy newspapers; will shafroth, president and ceo of the National Park foundation; elizabeth bumiller, Washington Bureau chief of the new york times; the honorable john warner, former secretary of the navy and United States senator from the commonwealth of virginia. [applause] thank you, senator. Ferdous alfaruque, medical device reporter for medtech insight and a press club board member. Skipping over our speaker for just a minute, rod kurkro, reporter at E E Publishing and the press Club Speakers Committee member who organized todays event. Thank you, rod. Tom crosson, the chief of Public Affairs for the National Park service; del wilber, a reporter at the los angeles times; april slayton, assistant director for communications at the National Park service; and andy fisher, senior director of communications for the Pew Charitable trusts. Thank you all. [applause] forty years ago, our speaker put on the uniform of a National Park service seasonal interpretive arranger and went to work on the national mall. In that year, our nations bicentennial, the National Park service was a mere 60 years old. Later this month, the park service turns 100, and Jonathan Jarvis is still wearing the greenandgray uniform. He has the hat here hell put on a minute, i think. No longer a temporary, summertime employee, jarvis is the leader of 22,000 employees who interpret, protect and maintain the system of more than 400 National Park units across all 50 states, the District Of Columbia and most us territories. As the National ParkService Enters its second century, it faces multiple challenges, balancing the parks financial needs, even as Congress Cuts the 3 billion budget, while demanding the agency do more. A 12 billion maintenance backlog; cultivating a new generation of younger and more diverse park visitors and volunteers; adapting to the effects of Climate Change in parks, including the loss of glaciers, coastlines and wildlife habitats; addressing wellpublicized occurrences of Sexual Harassment at the grand canyon and other parks, dealing with the effects of energy, mining and other developments and the proximity to the parks. In his career, jarvis has worn just about every hat you can wear at the park service, even though every hat at the park Service Looks Like alike. Hes been a scientist, ranger, superintendent, regional director, and now director. Id also personally like to thank director jarvis who agreed last fall to come to my january inauguration and swear me in as the new press club president. Of course, that was before we knew about the pending snowzilla storm and the couple feet of snow that crippled washington. Still, director jarvis showed his grit in coming to the hastily movedup inaugural. Thankfully today, we have slightly better weather. This is the first time in the history of the National Press club the Park Service Director has addressed the club. Please welcome to the press club podium Jonathan Jarvis, as he tells us of his plans for the centennial year of the National Park service. [applause] well, welcome, everybody. Thank you, tommy. Its great to be back in a little warmer weather than the last time we were here. And thank you, rod, for organizing this as well. And senator, thank you for joining us this morning. As was mentioned, this year the National Park service will be 100 years old, and i will have served for 40 of those years. So i have a few opinions about the second century. Let me start with an excerpt from the atlantic magazine the president wanted all the freedom and solitude possible while in the park, so all newspaper men and other strangers were excluded. Even the secret service men and his physician and private secretaries were left at gardiner. He craved once more to be alone with nature. He was evidently hungry for the wild and the aboriginal, a hunger that seems to come upon him and drives him on his trips to the west. In the morning he had stated his wish to go alone into the wilderness. His security detail very naturally did not quite like that idea. No, said the president. Put me up a lunch, and let me go alone. I will surely come back. And back he came. It was about five oclock when he came briskly down the path from the east to the camp. It came out that he had tramped about 18 miles through a very rough country. He came back looking as fresh as when he started, and at night, sitting before the big camp fire, related his adventures. This is john burroughss account of traveling with president Teddy Roosevelt in yellowstone National Park in the spring of 1903. In 2013, almost 110 years later, i was hiking out of the same yellowstone wilderness with my son ben. We were descending an open forest on a rock stream slope when the ground began to shake. And over the hill right behind us charged a stampeding herd of bison. We jumped behind a large boulder and the giant, furry creatures thundered past, so close i could have run my fingers through their manes. As the director of the National Park service, i have the privilege to not only have some pretty wild experiences, but to sort of put them in context. And i think for a moment, if all of you think for the moment that this nation decided 100 years ago that such extraordinary places like yellowstone could be set aside for the enjoyment of future generations, that concept that you and i can have a similar experience that Teddy Roosevelt had over 100 years ago. In 1914, stephen mather, who was an independently wealthy Borax Mining Company director observed the deteriorating condition of the National Parks, and he wrote a letter to the secretary of the interior, franklin lane, complaining about that. And secretary lane responded, dear steve, if you dont like the way the parks are being run, come down to washington and run them yourself. Now, i would imagine such challenges have launched Many Political careers here in washington. So in order to support the establishment of the National Park service, mather knew that if he got the right people into these extraordinary landscapes, they would become converts. So on july 14, 1915, mather gathered what became known as the Mather Mountain Party and he led them for a twoweek trip into the high sierra. The party included writers for the saturday evening post, the Vice President of the southern pacific railroad, the ranking republican congressman on appropriations, president of the new york zoological society, and the publisher of the visalia newspaper. It had photographers, attorneys and businessmen, california state engineer and gilbert grosvenor, the director of the National Geographic society. There was one park ranger and two chinese cooks. Ty sing, the chinese cook, was considered the best camp cook in the west. And he proved that every day with dinners for these folks of soup, salad, fried chicken, venison and gravy, potatoes, apple pie and hot sourdough biscuits warmed on the side of a sweaty mule that was laboring up the area we know today as sequoia and kings canyon National Parks. For two weeks, this group tramped and camped in alpine meadows, plunged into cold streams and reveled under a starlit sky. Cunningly, mather let the mountains do their magic and the trapping of that busy society, even 100 years ago, sort of swept away and bonds were formed not only with each, but with the land. And each night around the fire, they talked about conservation and the future of the National Parks. In that final bonfire night, as told by one of the travelers, mather said, well, weve had many glorious days together. And i should confess why i wanted you to come. Not only for your interesting company, but to hope that youd see the significance of these mountains and the whole picture of what were trying to do. Hopefully you will take this message and spread it through the land in your own avenue and style. These valleys and heights of the Sierra Nevada are just one small part of the majesty of america. Although sequoia and yellowstone and glacier and crater lake were already set aside, just think of the vast areas that should be preserved for the future. Think of the grand canyon, not yet protected. Or the wonders of our territories in alaska and hawaii. He said, unless we can protect the areas currently held with a separate government agency, we may lose them to selfish interests. And that evening, every member of the party vowed to go back and provide their active support to the establishment of the National Park service. Gil grosvenor vowed that the National Geographic society would march in step. And he fulfilled that promise by publishing in april of 1916 an entire issue, the land of the best, as a tribute to america. The press coverage in that period was quite extraordinary, and it influenced congress when it came to a vote of the establishment of the National Park service on august 25, 2016, 100 years ago. This year, the National Geographic society devoted every issue in 2016 to some aspect of the parks, and on the 100th anniversary released their full issue, yellowstone battle for the west. And by the way, the Media Coverage for the nps centennial has been really unprecedented. I believe we are now over eight billion media impressions for this centennial. So thank you, all, for all the coverage weve gotten. We cannot take the future of conservation for granted. We must use the magic of our parks and public lands to inspire and empower a new generation of conservation and historic preservation. In many ways, this centennial year has been a national Mather Mountain Party by inviting every american to find their park, that place that personally inspires them, rejuvenates them and builds some patriotic pride. And without the least bit of modesty, our centennial goal has been to create the next generation of visitors, supporters and advocates for our National Parks and our public lands. If we dont, then in the words of my predecessor, director mather, we may lose them to selfish interests who call for our parks and public lands to be developed for short term private gain. So i want each of you for the moment to take a little bit of patriotic pride that our nation created this idea of National Parks, and today that system embodies our highest ideals, our most symbolic places and stands frankly as the best National Park system in the world. They also tell the american story through place, 412 worthwhile places of great inspiration like the statue of liberty or mount rushmore. Places of great beauty like yosemite or the grand tetons. Places of awe like the grand canyon and everglades. Places of social conscience like selma to montgomery, or the home of frederick douglass. Or places of great ecological restoration like returning water flows to the everglades, one of the most ambitious ecological restorations in american history. They are places of great history like fort mchenry, a National Historic site, where our star spangled banner yet waved and inspired Francis Scott key to pen the poem that will be played at every u. S. Gold medal in the olympics this year. Theyre also places of great Public Health. The father of landscape architecture, frederick law olmsted, after a visit to yosemite in 1865, said that if we pursue our business lives without the occasional contemplation of nature and parks, men and women would be prone to a class of disorders including softening of the brain, nervous excitability, monomania, moroseness, melancholy, and irascibility. With all the irascibility in washington, i am wondering if people here need a prescription for the parks. These are also places of social action, like the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where in 1939, just as hitler invaded europe, the extraordinary singer marian anderson, denied an inside venue because of her race, sang my country tis of thee to a crowd of thousands on the mall. And on those same steps, dr. Martin luther king delivered i have a dream speech in 1963, inspiring the Civil Rights Movement to carry on to the promised land. You can go to that spot today and stand in the very footsteps of dr. King. There are sections and sentiments of dr. Kings speech that really speak to different people in different ways. And i particularly find a connection with his closing, when he called for freedom to ring from every mountainside, and repeated the line from my country tis of thee, land where my fathers died, land of pilgrims pride. These lands, believe it or not, are National Parks and are public lands, like gettysburg, the freedom trail, the smokies or yosemite. These are parks and public lands that the bells of freedom are calling us to come and experience the healing, educational and transformative powers of nature and history. They are also ringing the bells of freedom and justice, respect truth and calling us to live up to the values of our nation. The National Park service is unlike any other federal agency. We serve not only as stewards of the nations greatest landscapes, but also as keepers of its cultural memory. And that recognizing that the american narrative is not one narrative but many means telling that story in its entirety. So when i became director in 2009 with the encouragement of many individuals in this administration, and from the outside as well, we recognized that there are gaps in the american narrative as told by the National Parks. And we must recommend to the president new designations to fill those gaps to realize the inclusiveness and equality that have been part of the american vision, if not always the reality, we needed to start from the beginning. One summer day in 1619, a ship appeared off what was known as port comfort and an english fort overlooking the chesapeake bay. That ship later became to be known as the african mayflower because it carried the first enslaved africans to the colonies. By the time of the civil war, Point Comfort had become the Union Stronghold known as fort monroe, the only union fort to stand through the civil war south of the masondixon line. In the middle of the night, three escaped slaves appeared at fort monroe looking for sanctuary. General Benjamin Butler was at the command, and when the southern slaveowners demanded the return of their property, butler refused, acting only on his own. Butlers reasoning was that the slaves were confederate contraband and could be confiscated by union troops. This became known as the contraband decision and president Abraham Lincoln traveled down to fort monroe, spent the evening with butler, probably over a brandy or two, and traded their legal views. Lincoln returned to d. C. Inspired with his own legal theory and penned the first draft of the emancipation proclamation. The three fort monroe fugitives were the first slaves freed in the civil wear, and many more would follow. And so, fort monroe bookends the beginning and the end of slavery in the United States. And on november 1, 2011, acting under the authority of the antiquities act, president obama designated fort monroe and made it part of the National Park system. During its struggle for independence, in a Colonial Courthouse in new castle, delaware, this nation set itself on a course unprecedented in the world. It was here that delaware ratified the constitution, the first state to do so, and asserted that, under the laws of this new nation we were creating, all people had inalienable rights. And in march of 2013, president obama designated First State National monument as part of the National Park system. Nearly 100 years after delaware ratified the constitution, we were still a long way from liberty and justice envisioned by the founding