By Robert King -- Daily Staff Writer

A commission has been convened to help chart the future of national parks, including Shenandoah.

The National Parks Second Century Commission, convened by the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association, hopes to create a vision for the role of national parks in the next century. A Shenandoah National Park official said the park would cooperate with the commission.

"Right now it is just starting out," said Karen Beck-Herzog, the park's management assistant. "We are waiting to see what is going to come, what they are looking at. Certainly we are going to support them any way we can."

The commission was created to form recommendations on the parks' long-term future, said Mike Bento, a communications staffer for the panel.

"[The commission] will visit five parks, will gather information from a variety of sources and articulate a vision for what role these parks could play, how they teach us about our past, preserve our past, what happens in boundaries and what influences outside their boundaries," Bento said.

The commission is comprised of nearly 30 national leaders, conservationists, business leaders and other experts. The co-chairmen are former Sens. J. Bennett Johnson Jr., D-La., and Howard H. Baker Jr., R-Tenn.

The commission held its first meeting last week at a national park in Santa Monica, Calif., and plans to meet at Yellowstone, Gettysburg, Lowell and Great Smoky Mountains national parks, according to an NPCA press release.

The National Park Service supports the commission's goals. In a letter to Johnston, park service Director Mary A. Bomar cites a recent report on the future of national parks and the five goals for the second century, including environmental leadership, stewardship and education.

"I hope the National Parks Second Century Commission will consider all these goals and provide your insight on ways to attain them, not for ourselves, but for the American people," Bomar wrote.

Beck-Herzog said the park service held town meetings throughout the nation a few years ago to get feedback on the course of national parks.

Shenandoah's town hall meeting occurred in Richmond.

"We all learned different things," Beck-Herzog said of the meeting. "[An] important thing [is] remaining relevant to public, looking at what services we provide. We are trying to figure out how to do that, how we [engage] the public and how we get the youth into the parks when they haven't been there. Those are all things that we are looking at."

Bento said the Second Century Commission hopes to present a report to federal leaders by September 2009.

"We expect that to be a report with recommendations to the new administration, Congress and to the National Park Service," he said.

* Contact Robert King at rking@nvdaily.com