David Vela | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Acting Director of the National Park Service | |
| In office October 1, 2019 –August 7, 2020 | |
| Preceded by | P. Daniel Smith (Acting) |
| Succeeded by | Margaret Everson (Acting) |
Raymond David Vela is a parks administrator who is the former acting director of the United States National Park Service. [1]
Vela grew up in Wharton,Texas. At a Senate hearing,he described himself as the oldest grandchild of a sharecropper. [1]
He graduated from Texas A&M University with a degree in recreational parks and tourism sciences in 1982. [2]
Vela is the former superintendent of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. [1] He has also worked as the National Park Service's director for workforce and inclusion;director of the National Park Service Southeast region;and superintendent of the George Washington Memorial Parkway,Palo Alto Battlefield National Historic Site and Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park. [1]
He has held other positions at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park in Texas,Appomattox Court House National Historical Park in Virginia;Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia,Pennsylvania. [2]
President Donald Trump first nominated Vela as director of the National Park Service in 2018. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted to advance Vela's nomination in 2018,but he was never confirmed by the Senate. Vela joined the National Park Service's Washington office as acting deputy director of operations. [1] In September 2019,Interior Secretary David Bernhardt announced that he was promoting Vela to director on an acting basis. [3]
Vela is the first Latino to lead the National Park Service. [4]
In May 2020,two activist groups,Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Western Watersheds Project,sued over Bernhardt's ongoing interim appointments of Vela to run the National Park service and William Perry Pendley to run the Bureau of Land Management,which bypassed Senate confirmation. [5]
In June 2020,Vela announced that the Trump administration would end a five-year-old ban on certain hunting practices in Alaska. The rule change will allow hunters to bait hibernating bears from their dens,kill wolf mothers and pups in their dens,shoot swimming caribou from a boat,and target animals from airplanes and snowmobiles. [6]
Vela campaigned for the Great American Outdoors Act,passed by Congress and signed by Trump on August 4,2020. The law allocates billions of dollars to improve park maintenance. [7]
Vela announced on August 7,2020,that he would retire in September 2020. [8] He was replaced by Margaret Everson. [9]
Vela is married and has a daughter and a son. [2]
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The Antiquities Act of 1906 is an act that was passed by the United States Congress and signed into law by Theodore Roosevelt on June 8,1906. This law gives the president of the United States the authority to,by presidential proclamation,create national monuments from federal lands to protect significant natural,historic,or scientific features. The Act has been used more than a hundred times since its enactment to create a wide variety of protected areas.
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Jonathan B. Jarvis served as the 18th Director of the United States National Park Service,confirmed by the United States Senate on September 25,2009,and serving until his retirement on January 3,2017.
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David Longly Bernhardt is an American lawyer who served as the 53rd United States secretary of the interior from 2019 to 2021 in the administration of Donald Trump. He previously was a shareholder at the Colorado law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck,where he was an oil and energy industry lobbyist and natural resources attorney. He began working for the United States Department of the Interior (DOI) in 2001,and served as the department's solicitor from 2006 to 2009 and deputy secretary from 2017 to 2019.
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P. Daniel Smith is a longtime United States government administrator who is a former acting director of the U.S. National Park Service in the first Trump administration.
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