Washington, D.C. – National Park Service Director is a featured speaker during the 21st Annual Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) Conference this week in Miami, Florida.

“SEJ members are known for in depth reporting on the nation’s environmental issues and we will welcome about 500 reporters, editors, producers, as well as students and professors from journalism schools around the country,” Jarvis said of efforts to host the journalists visiting south Florida national parks during the conference week.

“Last year the conference was held in Missoula, Montana, and Glacier National Park Superintendent Chas Cartwright and I let a tour of the park. We and other park staff talked with reporters about climate change effects in national parks. The SEJ members on that tour asked a lot of great questions and I expect the same exchange as we look at issues such as the Everglades restoration program, the largest construction project in the National Park Service.

SEJ has nine tours of south Florida before their conference begins. Three of the tours will take SEJ members to Everglades National Park, Big Cypress National Preserve and Biscayne National Park.

Jarvis and Everglades National Park Superintendent Dan Kimball will lead a group of 50 journalists through an overview of the Everglades and a boat tour of Florida Bay and the southern part of the park.

Up north, Big Cypress Superintendent Pedro Ramos will be part of a tour with stops at the Tamiami Bridge project where Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar is expected to address reporters, then on into the park.

The full schedule of the Oct. 18-23 conference is available at www.sej.org.

The National Park Service media kit for the conference is available at www.nps.gov/news/sej.htm.