Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis, and other NPS bigwigs must have been squirming as they listened to the eulogy. Robert Danno was saluting Margaret Anderson’s “uncommon professionalism,” days after the 34-year-old Mt. Rainier ranger had been gunned down by a deranged park visitor on New Year’s Day.
Danno had recruited Anderson when he was chief ranger at Utah’s Bryce Canyon National Park. Anderson later followed her mentor to C&O Canal National Historic Park when Danno snagged the top ranger job there in 2004. But now, thanks to the all-too-common unprofessionalism exhibited by many Washington bureaucrats, Danno has become a persona non grata in the agency he had honorably served for three decades.
Danno was called “disloyal” for blowing the whistle on his superiors, who allowed Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder to chop down 130 trees on park property to enhance the view from his $10 million Potomac mansion in 2004. For his trouble, Danno was demoted, arrested, charged with a trumped-up felony, acquitted, and finally stuck in a dead-end job.
He’s not keeping quiet. In his new book, “Worth Fighting For: A Park Ranger’s Unexpected Battle,” Danno describes the years of retaliation he has endured. His story of how this came about is substantially backed up by then-Interior Inspector General Earl Devaney’s 2006 report.
“I was naive,” Danno told The Washington Examiner. “I had never even heard of Dan Snyder before I got to Washington. I was mortified by the violation of our primary mission to protect these resources unimpeded for future generations.”
Unbeknownst to the former chief ranger, as he urged then-acting C&O park Superintendent Kevin Brandt to refuse Snyder’s request, a secret deal between the billionaire and NPS officials was already in the works. Brandt would be the one who announced to the public, falsely, that the tree-cutting was to eliminate invasive species.
In 2005, just two weeks after Danno reported the transgression to the Office of Special Counsel and the Department of Interior’s inspector general, federal agents confiscated his badge and gun, packed up the contents of his office — including his many National Park Service awards — and took them to his West Virginia home. He was reassigned to Fort Hunt Park in Alexandria, where his only responsibility was issuing permits for four picnic tables.
Devaney’s Jan. 19, 2006, inspector general report completely vindicated Danno. “Our investigation determined that NPS failed to follow any of its established policies and procedures,” the report said, noting that Snyder had previously offered park officials $25,000 “as mitigation for his scenic easement variance request.” Investigators concluded that permission to cut the trees had come from former NPS Director Fran Mainella’s office, although she and Special Assistant P. Daniel Smith provided contradictory accounts about whether Mainella was approached while attending a Redskins game.
Brandt later received an award from Mainella and remains C&O superintendent to this day. Nobody at NPS was ever punished for this outrageous violation of law and agency policy. Nobody, that is, but Danno.
The “ranger’s ranger” was soon accused of stealing the same NPS property the agency had relocated to his home. After a three-day trial, it took a federal jury minutes to acquit him. Despite numerous letters to Salazar and Jarvis, he says, the National Park Service refuses to make things right.
Seven years after Danno valiantly tried to uphold the professionalism of his beloved NPS, he says he’s “twiddling my thumbs” at Antietam National Battlefield — on full pay, but with few responsibilities. Ironically, one of them is to develop park boundaries for the Washington, D.C. region.
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner’s local opinion editor.
