Meet a Local Planner: Trevor Rice

How do various agencies, such as city park and recreation departments, regional park districts, and the National Park Service, coordinate and communicate?

A common challenge in the park community is that visitors are often unaware of the distinct responsibilities of these agencies, particularly in regions like the Bay Area, where multiple entities manage diverse open spaces. For example, a half-day hike in the East Bay or Marin County might traverse parks overseen by three or four different agencies.

This lack of distinction among agencies necessitates careful consideration during planning, design management, and decision-making processes. Ideally, the public should be able to enjoy recreational activities without needing to recognize differences in responsibilities between various areas. While collaboration among agencies is not mandatory, it is practiced as a good neighbor and partner, particularly with neighboring lands that share infrastructure, like trails.

From a planning standpoint, closer collaboration typically occurs with adjacent jurisdictions, since external planning decisions can impact park management. For instance, in Martinez, where I work as a park planner, one of the parks under my purview is the John Muir National Historic Site. This park adjoins land managed by entities such as the John Muir Land Trust and the East Bay Regional Park District, entailing collaboration on shared infrastructure and resources.

Furthermore, as a park planner for sites in an urban environment, I must monitor local government and county agencies to ensure that development projects don’t negatively impact the park’s resources or visitor experience. At the same time, because we rely upon the transportation infrastructure and other municipal services of our parks’ surrounding jurisdictions, I strive to develop partnerships with my counterparts at local, regional, and state agencies and am always looking for opportunities for mutually beneficial projects. This might not be the case for colleagues who work for large parks such as Yellowstone or Yosemite, which provide their own municipal services and effectively function as miniature cities, and therefore have their own complexities and challenges.

In my opinion, some of the most exciting collaboration happens for regional trails networks. Organizations like the Bay Area Trails Collaborative facilitate such collaboration efforts.

During the pandemic, we noticed a huge increase in park visitors. How challenging was it to manage the parks during those times?

There was a significant increase in park visitation, but as I mentioned earlier, I am more involved with the sites that do not necessarily serve the purpose of outdoor recreation. While some trails are available, they are largely inaccessible to the public, with only guided tours granting access to a couple of them.

At the John Muir Historic Site in Martinez, hiking and multi-use trails experienced a doubling in usage compared to pre-pandemic levels. However, this increase has gradually tapered off. Conversely, sites like the Visitor Education Center at Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, which features an interactive museum, faced closure for over a year due to being indoor spaces. Luckily, the staff found creative ways to keep them occupied by offering virtual educational programs and engaging with people on social media.

This period presented a unique dichotomy: while open spaces and natural trails experienced a surge in visitation well within their capacity, requiring minimal management efforts, other sites faced a drastic drop in visitation, demanding focused attention to keep facilities operational and inviting to visitors. It was indeed an interesting time to be involved in park management.

What keeps you busy in your day-to-day work, and what factors affect your work?

There are two things, with the first being the current [presidential] administration’s push for sustainability. Executive and secretarial orders that have come out address everything from single-use plastics to electric vehicles to water use, and they have filtered down to the park level. Now, we’re being asked to figure out how to integrate those larger federal executive orders into our day-to-day management. That’s one thing that more broadly affects all parks in the national parks program.

Second, we’re very fortunate right now to have leadership for both our bureau and department that are very different from what we’ve had in the past. Right now, both the Director of the National Park Service and the Secretary of the Interior are Native American. They count themselves as part of indigenous communities, and so, have been able to bring leadership and a different lens to some of the decision-making on those issues. This has been reflected in the secretarial and director’s orders that have come down and affect the daily management and plan for the future of our parks.

What achievement are you most proud of?

One of the things I look back on most fondly is completing a Comprehensive Site Management Plan for the Mt. Wanda unit of John Muir National Historic Site. That is a huge accomplishment for both me and the team involved. Another noteworthy project is the Ocean Beach Fire Program, which I worked on during my time at GGNRA. That project, though controversial and challenging, was vital for managing an urban park under the jurisdiction of the NPS but adjacent to the residential areas in San Francisco.