Edward Keable, Superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, chats with Callum LaFrance, Legal Fellow for the Environmental Justice Clinic and the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law and Graduate School about the intricacies of managing the Grand Canyon National Park.
Edward Keable, Superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, chats with Callum LaFrance, Legal Fellow for the Environmental Justice Clinic and the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law and Graduate School. They discuss the intricacies of managing the Grand Canyon National Park.
Learn more - listen to the Behind the Scenery (U.S. National Park Service) podcast series. The latest episode talks about fire ecology.
Also, check out Grand Canyon Speaks - Grand Canyon National Park (U.S. National Park Service) and Minute Out In It - Grand Canyon National Park (U.S. National Park Service) ,which is a collection of short films about the park's nature and culture in action.
Narrator
For this podcast, the production of the Maverick Lloyd School for the Environment of Vermont Law and Graduate School.
LaFrance
Hello and welcome to Hothouse Earth. My name is Callum LaFrance. I'm a recent graduate of the Vermont Law and Graduate School, and I'm a legal fellow here at the Environmental Justice Clinic and the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems. I'm lucky enough to be joined today from across the noon meridian by Superintendent Ed Keeble. Good morning.
Keable
Good morning, Callum.
LaFrance
Ed has been the superintendent of the Grand Canyon National Park since April 26th, 2020. He leads GRC with a focus on three priorities Indigenous affairs, climate change and infrastructure and historic preservation. Superintendent Keeble chairs the National Park Service, NPS, Colorado River Steering Committee, which addresses Colorado River policy issues for NPS and serves as the representative to the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Working Group, a committee chartered under the Federal Advisory Committee Act to make recommendations to the Secretary of the Interior on water releases from the Glen Canyon Dam.
Prior to serving at GRC, he served as an attorney in the Department of the Interior Office of the Solicitor for 23 years, including as the Associate Solicitor for administration, the Associate Solicitor for General Law and the Deputy Solicitor for General law. He served in the US Army Judge Advocate General Corps. Prior to joining the Department, and perhaps most importantly, Superintendent Keeble is a valued alumnus of Vermont Law School, Class of 86.
Keable
Yes.
LaFrance
Yeah, truly. Thank you for making the time to talk with me today. And one of the things I want to talk with you about was your work with the different indigenous tribes in and around the national park. And I was curious about how your interest with working the tribes began.
Keable
So first there are 11 associated tribes to Grand Canyon National Park. And my interest in tribal relations began when I was working in the solicitor's office. I was in the division of general law, effectively the lawyer to the lawyers, amongst other things. So I gave legal advice to secretaries of the Interior Bureau directors for 23 years. But I also gave legal advice to the lawyers in the Department of the Interior in the areas of expertise that you articulated.
And we had a a division of Indigenous lawyers. And so I would frequently give them legal advice in those specialty areas that I had. And as I did that, I just learned more and more about the fascinating and complex legal authorities and responsibilities that the federal government has. The Department of Interior has. The department here is bureaus have two tribes and I just became really interested in intrigued by it all.
And when I got assigned to the superintendent of Grand Canyon in 2020, I suddenly got thrust into a position where tribal relations was an important facet of the job, not an ancillary facet of the job.
LaFrance
Right. So this was already like a relationship that was kind of established or started for the parks at the time when you came in.
Keable
So most parks have Associated Tribes as Grand Canyon has 11 Associated tribes. I think Yellowstone is well over 20, maybe even over 30. And so there there is a program in the National Park Service to support tribal relations. Each park has responsibilities to work with tribes. Some tribes, as indigenous lawyers know, have treaties and some don't. And treaties can dictate the relationship more clearly than than the non-treaty tribes relationships with parts of the none of the 11 associated tribes, the Grand Canyon, our treaty tribes.
Keable
So we just manage our relationships as a facet of managing the park.
LaFrance
Well, when we talked earlier, you spoke a bit about relationship building, and I was hoping that you could talk more about that.
Keable
Sure. Greg Haney, National Park, like so many other federal land units, was established over 100 years ago against the will of the people who lived here from time immemorial. Right. And then Grand Canyon National Park, like some other federal land units, actively work to keep those people away from their homelands. And and tribal people have different relationships to the land than those of us who come from a European background, right where we have concepts of land ownership and land responsibility and tribal perspectives about land.
It's much more holistic than that. And so when when we kept tribal people away from their homelands for a century, it had really important impacts on their cultures. And so Greg Haney, National Park tried to really reassess our relationships with tribes. Certainly before I became superintendent, in fact, a good six or seven years before I came became superintendent, and we set up a process with the support of our official friends group, the Grand Canyon Conservancy, who funded this process to begin having dialog with representatives of all the 11 Associated Tribes about what welcoming them home looks like.
Because that was our goal as a park was to be more welcoming to tribal members. Yeah. And it frankly took years for the park to build that relationship because there was no trust at the beginning of that relationship. And even when I got to the park in 2020, we were still working very much at the trust building stage of the relationship.
But I've been many. I've managed to do a number of things here in the park as superintendent that has validated the relationship for our tribal neighbors and and has launched us to a new place where we're having conversations about how to work together to support this amazing land. And that's really exciting for us to be in that place.
We're still in the early stages of those discussions because even that takes time to build trust. Once you start working on specific projects. But it's it's exciting for us to be at a place where we're we're working in partnership with the tribes associated the Grand Canyon.
LaFrance
That's awesome. So something we talked talk about here at the law school is how important learning tribal law and treaty law in general is for U.S. attorneys and how it should be taught as a as a mandatory class in a way, because it's one of the essential bodies of law that exists like federal law, state law and treaty law.
I don't know if you had any thoughts about that, like if you were taking classes on it or if you had to kind of just teach yourself how those relationships interplay and how they're affected by by court decisions.
Keable
When I was in law school, it's not that I was an idiot, but I was it was a remarkably well, yeah. I asked some of my friends, but I was remarkably naive, right? I mean, I didn't really understand where my career was going to go. I sort of had an idea where my career was going to go, and it wasn't where my career wound up going. So I didn't take any Indian law classes or environmental law classes from Alaska, Right. I mean, I went to Vermont Law School, one of the premier law schools for environmental law in the country. And I didn't take a single environmental law course. My interest was general law. And my father was a general practitioner in rural northern New York.
And I just assumed that that was going to be my career trajectory. And so I focused on that and had a great experience writing great education. But I do think that Indigenous law is something that anybody who's interested in public service law certainly should get involved with for a couple of reasons. One is if if you're going to be in federal practice, particularly federal land management practice, even the legal practice that supports that area, having an understanding of Indian law is really important because the landscape is replete with tribal interests.
But also there's there's a really rich history of Indian law that is critical to understand the constitutional framework, which sets up other parts of legal practice in in government. I mean, so Indians are sovereign nations, tribes are sovereign nations, and that sovereignty is really basic to the relationships that federal agencies have to tribes. Yeah, a lot of superintendents who don't have a good grounding in indigenous law in particular don't understand the most basic principle of the relationship, which is that we are working government to government relationships.
And that's an important foundational understanding that those of us who have the responsibility to work with tribes need to need to really understand.
LaFrance
Yeah. Thank you. Learning. Learning. Indian law is so crucial for for getting that respect. Most Americans don't perceive tribal nations as their own countries. You know, like that. There's actual countries within the United States that I was curious how many tribes have a connection to the Grand Canyon.
Keable
So there are 11 tribes associated with the Grand Canyon, and we have really common and and disparate ways that we work with them based on what their interests are. A lot of them have similar interests, right? They all want to have an ongoing continuing connection to the park. So we look for ways to welcome them back as tribal members, but also welcome them back as indigenous people.
And and so we part of what we do here in the park to manage tribal relations is we've established a tribal program at the park which basically serves as my State Department because tribes are independent nations under our constitutional framework. We have to have relationships with each of them, understanding what interests those each of those 11 tribes have and how to work with them to give them opportunities to help us manage the park.
Right. We we want that because they have perspectives that are insightful, but also because they help support park operations through work that we can do with them. So I just give a couple of examples of how we do that. So one one area that many parks work with tribes on is through our interpretive programing and providing first voice interpretation program in parks. We do that at Grand Canyon National Park. We have a connection with all 11 tribes and bring tribal members into the park through a different programs. We have to share their historical, cultural perspective of Grand Canyon. And so that's a really important and really popular part of our interpretive programing. We also have some environmental interests that we are working on tribes with.
So one of the initiatives that we've launched here just within the last year is an effort to begin to monitor the springs in the Grand Canyon. Springs are a harbinger of the health of the of hydrology of the area. Certainly that's true of Grand Canyon. And so we want to survey the springs to understand both, you know, the the the volume of water in our springs, the the visitation that we get in our springs from our wildlife species, you can, you can test waters to determine those sorts of things.
So we we work within the tribal affairs program to do outreach to tribes to explain some of the programing that we're doing and ask them, is this something you're interested in working with us and and which helps us to develop more extensive initiatives than we might do if we were just managing this program by the park itself. So those are just a couple of examples of how we engage with tribes.
LaFrance
Yeah, those are great. Thank you. How is living and working out in Arizona having to manage relationships with so many different folks who are connected through the river changed your relationship to water?
Keable
Well, I grew up in northern New York on Lake Champlain, and it's early in my childhood. In the sixties and seventies, water was abundant and you never really thought about water. You know, that's less true today than it was when I was a child. But what are certainly more abundant in New York than it is in Arizona? The Great National Park is in the high desert portion of Arizona, but it's desert.
The precipitation here is precious. In fact, it's it's snowing today as we speak. And we celebrate every drop of rain or every snowflake because it's so important to the ecosystem here. A lot of the tribal leaders I talk to like to remind me that water is life. And that is true a lot. A lot of the tribal leaders also believe the Grand Canyon that is a living entity and that the water that flows through it and the river and the streams and the seeps in the springs is the lifeblood of this place.
And that sort of enhances the perspective of just how important the water is and why I spend at least a quarter. And sometimes it seems like a third of my time dealing with water-related issues as superintendent. The Colorado River Basin has been in drought since the beginning of the century, and in fact, scientists refer to what's happening in the basin not as drought but as a new term, which is aridification of the West.
The climate has changed so dramatically over the last 25 years that fundamental things are changing about the environment, including the soil. Acidification of the West means that the soil, the environment is getting more arid across the landscape and we see that here at Grand Canyon National Park in multiple ways. We have identified three climate impacts here at Grand Canyon National Park. There are people impacts, forest impacts and river impacts and as superintendent of the park, my responsibility as it relates to managing environmental interests here is understanding what those impacts are and mitigating them to the extent that I can as I manage the park.
LaFrance
Where some of the other the other folks who you have to communicate with when you make choices with water management or are there any.
Keable
Sure. So it depends on what what aspect of water management I'm I'm thinking about at any given time. So we'll talk about river impact in my introduction talked about some of the roles that I play. I wear those three hats as superintendent, chair of the steering committee in the National Park Service of the Colorado River and representative for the National Park Service and the Grand Coulee Dam Adaptive Management Working Group.
So wearing those different hats, I interact with a multiplicity of interested parties in the park. I focus on Park Central issue issues and constituents, including park staff, but also people who come into the park and recreate on the river or help me to manage Colorado River issues. Particularly, I'm thinking of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, which is a sister park system unit just north of the park.
And so Glen Canyon is a recreation area that is north and south of of the Glen Canyon Dam. So Lake Powell is part of that park unit. And so we work in collaboration to manage fish issues because we have that joint interest. Similarly with Lake Mead Recreation Area south or west of the park, that's another park unit that is basically part of Lake Mead's watershed.
And we work with them on water issues, recreation or fish management or other other interests. I also work with tribal partners on water management that qualify tribally. A couple of years ago was successful in getting congressionally authorized water rights, drawing from the Grand Canyon. So I work with the Hualapai Tribe on their water rights issues in the steering committee.
I lead a group of nine superintendents to regions, some technical experts to understand the impacts of acidification on the nine park units and their variable interests and try to develop a coherent National Park Service policy perspectives as we wade into other, larger federal processes to assess impacts of water management throughout the basin. And then in the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Working Group, we work throughout the basin with seven states and five tribes, three or four federal agencies, depending on how you count and other represented interests, recreational interests, water power interests and and others to help understand what's happening in the system and to make recommendations to the Secretary of the Interior on how to deliver water from Glen Canyon Dam. So from the upper basin to the lower basin states. That's a really complicated, Yes. Series of issues so that the parties that I deal with are, you know, stretched seven states and multiple issue expertise and jurisdictional boundaries within the federal government and tribes and such. So it's really quite a complex and interesting.
LaFrance
How many lessons of seeking compromise from working with so many different groups who have maybe perhaps sometimes conflicting interests?
Keable
Yeah, it's all compromise. These issues are governed in large part not entirely by a compact between the seven days and states that was signed in the 1920s. There really is a almost 100 year history of compromise between interested parties to make sure that the health of the river is is maintained, not just because of environmental interests, although that's certainly part of my interest and a significant part of my interest. But everybody wants the river to be healthy because they want the river to be here to provide whatever their interest is in the river, whether it's water for drinking and other municipal uses, whether it's water for agriculture, whether it's recreation, whether it's hydropower, or everybody wants a long, sustainable, healthy river to make sure that all of those interests are met. And so there is, like I said, there's a 100 year history of compromise that's being stressed right now as as the environment and aridification, in particular, is impacting the the basin. But it's also getting more important that we compromise.
LaFrance
Yeah, that's something we talk about a lot in the clinical Professor Montoya teaches us. She talks a lot about interests, convergence, finding interest convergence between organizations because so often there are folks who may not like understand their relationship to the environment through the lens of protecting it or thinking about its well-being. But they are hunters and fishers, and so ultimately they are related to the environment because they're eating from it. And so, you know, join together, you can seek to fight.
Keable
Pollution or whatever. Yeah, I'll give you I'll give you a good example. You work with a hydropower agency called Western Area Power Authority. WAPA and WAPA has a mission to produce and distribute hydroelectric power in the Colorado River region. And they serve a really invaluable role, especially as they produce power for some of the hotter, drier areas of southern Arizona.
And when I got to the park, there were really strong hydropower interests being articulated in the context of of the FARKA committee. Like any dam working group, there's a there's a there's a law Congress passed in the 1990s called the Grand Canyon Protection Act. And it expressly says that the Grand Canyon Dam should be managed with a view towards protecting the environmental, recreational and cultural resource interests of the Grand Canyon.
And I so I got into the working group and started advocating for all these other interests. And it was there was initially some real tension between what I was trying to advocate for and what the WAPA representatives were trying to advocate for. But we eventually struck on some common interests. So, for example, we both have common interests in maintaining Lake Powell at certain levels of Glen Canyon Dam because that protects hydropower production.
And it also makes sure that there's sufficient cold water passing through the dam to disadvantage invasive fish and to prevent invasive fish from coming into the river. Because one of the things that we found is that as the lake levels dropped in Lake Powell, the invasive predatory fish that lived in the warmer surface levels were passing through the dam and some of them were surviving and and potentially spawning in the area just south of the dam, creating what I refer to as a clear and present danger to the federally threatened humpback chub species that is exists in the Grand Canyon.
95% of the humpback chub population lives in the Grand Canyon. That's 95% of the population in the world. There used to be a large population of the humpback chub in the upper basin. So north of the dam. But the predatory fish, particularly the smallmouth bass, decimated the population in the upper basin and so if the smallmouth bass were to establish a population south of the dam in the Grand Canyon, it would again would decimate the remaining population of of back chub in the Grand Canyon, which would touch off all sorts of Endangered Species Act issues which may get to dam management issues which may get to hydropower success into the future.
So we have this joint policy interest in maintaining high levels of water in Lake Powell, which is increasingly difficult as water is disappearing in the basin. But we have that shared interest and we've been able to find common ground in some really difficult conversations that have gotten to us, some to some policy commonality as well.
LaFrance
That's what so much of what you deal with. You need a good grasp of like systems analysis and just understanding how everything is interconnected, Right?
Keable
Yeah. Which is, you know, one thing I'll say is, which is really helpful to having gone to law school, because law school teaches you a way to think analytically that supports that kinds of system analysis, because I was trained to think analytically, understanding system analysis is is just another analytical construct. So I think my capacity to absorb system analytics is informed by my law school education.
LaFrance
Nice.
Keable
So we've talked a little bit about river health, and I just wanted to touch on the other environmental impacts that are happening at the Grand Canyon. One of them is people Health. As I said, drinking in National Park is in the desert where it's 7000 feet in the south rim, 8000 feet in the north rim. So on the rims themselves, it doesn't typically get higher than the middle nineties, maybe high nineties in the south rim.
But it gets kind of counter-intuitively gets hotter as you hike into the canyon. And a lot of our visitors aren't aware of that dynamic and so they're not really prepared to hike in the heat. Typically in the summer of the canyon and and so that affects people's health. As the temperatures get hotter every year, it gets more dangerous to hike into the canyon.
So we have a search and rescue program to help save people who are in distress. We're hiking in the canyon in 2024, we had 348 search and rescue operations. So assisting people who are in distress in the canyon, 201 of them required aviation extraction. So we had sent a helicopter into airlift 201 of those 384 people out of the canyon because they were in so much distress.
In 2023. Those numbers were were smaller. There were 302 total stars. This represents something of a trend arc that over time we're seeing more incidents of heat-related injuries in the canyon. So we're working to address those issues in multiple ways. We have QR codes at our trailheads that talk about the conditions of the trails and and the temperatures that that visitors can expect.
We're working to understand the science of heat impacts on the human body, partnering with our National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to understand these kinds of things and to develop education programs for our hikers. So I just want to share that perspective of of of people impacts to climate change and the forest impacts are real as well. So the developed areas, the areas where people go to at the Grand Canyon, for the most part, the south rim and the north rim developed areas are surrounded by forests, the combat national forests, borders, Grand Canyon, and National Park on both the north and the south ribs.
So in 2024, we had in the in the park itself, we had 14 wildfires in the Kitab National Forest. They had 100 wildfires. And and so those numbers are increased from past years as well. We have threatened bird species as well, and their habitats are at risk with wildfire.
LaFrance
Right? Yeah. I was thinking like it's so tough that one of our nation's greatest treasures, one of the most beautiful places on earth, you know, you could probably argue like, is just becoming less accessible.
Keable
No, you can't. You can't argue that it is the most beautiful place on Earth. Right. You know, there's a there's there's a debate in the world about climate change and what to do about it. And and it's not that I don't care about those big global discussions about climate change, but that's not my brief as super of the Grand Canyon.
My brief is managing the Grand Canyon. And and I will say that there are impacts on the environment happening at the Grand Canyon, and I'm responsible for understanding those impacts and to managing to those impacts to the extent that I can. And with people, health, forest health and river health issues, that's how I work to address climate change. The impact that Grand Canyon National Park.
LaFrance
Yeah, yeah. I'm so glad that you're embodying those perspectives in a way, you know, letting it inform paid or.
Keable
Yeah, that experience that I had in the solicitor's office has been extremely helpful for me to find those common grounds and which we've, we've been able to do very successfully, particularly in the last, I would say two years and develop shared policy perspectives.
LaFrance
Well, I want to thank you, Ed, for taking the time to talk today and to share your experiences and insight on working at the most beautiful place on Earth.
Keable
Yeah, thanks, Callum. It's been a real pleasure talking to you and I look forward to seeing you at the Grand Canyon sometime.
LaFrance
Yeah, I can't wait to go. Thank you so much for keeping it safe.
Narrator
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