Working for the National Park Service’s Rivers and Trails Program
Mellen and her dog at Storm Castle Peak in Gallatin Canyon, Montana.
You could call Lelia Mellen ’82 a connector: a person who brings others together for the greater good, but one who also helps connect wild areas to each other and to humankind. As an outdoor recreation planner for the Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance program for the National Park Service, Mellen helps communities plan and develop natural areas for people to enjoy.
A love of nature was established early in Mellen’s life. As a child, her father rewarded Mellen and her sisters for graduating first grade with a trip to the Smoky Mountains, where they would hike, paddle the rivers, and interact with the wilderness.
“That planted the seed for loving nature and understanding the importance of it in our lives,” she says. “There are all kinds of studies showing the benefits of early exposure to nature—I’m the embodiment of that.”
As a student at Dartmouth, a friend suggested viewing the only bald eagle nest [at that time] in New Hampshire.
“It was quite remote,” she recalls. “We were paddling through this swampy area, and [nature] just touches you.”
After Dartmouth, she served with the Peace Corps as an agriculture volunteer in Sierra Leone before heading to Duke University for a master’s degree in environmental management. During the summer between her two years of grad school, she worked for the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress, where she was introduced to the RTCA staff of the Park Service.
“I thought, These are my people,” she says. “This is what I want to do.”
Planning the Mascoma RiverGreenway in New Hampshire: Mellen with an RTCA partner from the Upper Valley Trails Alliance.
Fortunately for Mellen, the National Park Service had received a rare increase in its budget, allowing more people to be hired to help run RTCA’s offices. She spent 30 years with the rivers and trails program in the Vermont/New Hampshire office. She focused on projects in northern New England, working with water-oriented groups; community groups; local, state, and federal agencies; and nonprofits to help them with their outdoor recreation and conservation initiatives.
The lure of new challenges took her to Montana one year ago.
“Life has its moments of inflection, and two years ago, I was ready to do something different. I thought I could retire but I was not ready, so I reached out an NPS colleague in Denver,” she says.
Mellen was hired to oversee the Bozeman, Montana, office, and she packed up and headed west.
Already familiar with Montana because her father and her children had moved there from her original home state of Georgia, she was able to reopen the office and begin working with local organizers seeking to enhance their access to water and recreation. As a regionally based program, Mellen’s office is part of the Intermountain Region, which ranges from Montana to Texas.
“Groups apply to us for our technical assistance once a year,” she says. “Anyone can apply. Often, they’ve got a project in mind for outdoor recreation or [trails]. They have this great idea, and they want help in getting it going. This is where the rivers and trails program comes in and can help launch their ideas.”
Mellen (in blue) helping install trail signs with an NPS colleague and volunteers Woodstock, Vermont, as part of Walk Woodstock.
Climate change is affecting all facets of the national parks and their environs, something that Montana’s ranchers know all too well but their politicians are slower to recognize.
A NPS project on the Yellowstone River that flooded badly two years ago has had to be couched in “safer” terms, Mellen says.
“They could not talk about ‘climate’ resiliency but...talking about ‘flood’ resiliency is acceptable,” she says. One of the environmental groups she worked with said when they talk to ranchers one on one, they have no doubt [the climate is] changing.
“The recognition is coming, the political will is slower,” she says.
That project in particular was a classic one for her: building consensus with myriad stakeholders, from ranchers to environmentalists to city, county, and state officials. Once the NPS portion of the project is completed, the project is turned over to local stakeholders. Mellen usually has about five projects each year, mainly creating river and land trails. She writes grants, offers technical assistance, and connects local organizers with other sources of support.
“I absolutely love my job,” she says. “I’m incredibly fortunate. The best day is when I’m outside on a project seeing the plans. Getting outside, I still prioritize, but I love getting outside with my project partners and having them show me what they love. It is so rewarding to catch their energy and enthusiasm and hear what makes their neighborhood so special. That’s incredibly moving and gives you hope for the future.
Lelia Mellen ’82, cross-country skiing in in Dorchester, New Hampshire, around Cummings Pond at a place called the Greens.
“Then we move on, and hopefully they are going gangbusters,” she continues. “We work with visionaries, and they see potential down the road. There can be frustration along the way. [Projects] can take decades. It takes a champion who is doggedly working at it.”
Connecting people happens in boardrooms and on rivers and trails. And trails connect people at a human scale, she says.
“When you pass someone on a trail, you can have that connection. You’re just people out there, you can say hi, you have a shared interest. There’s some spark of connection. It builds community, bringing us all down to a human level, one to one. We all want the same thing: happy, safe, good, fulfilled lives. Fundamentally, we’re all connected,” she says.
“For us to be outside, it’s so good for our mental and physical health—it’s restorative. We are connected to the natural world, and I hope we can remember that, foster that, and keep the opportunities growing.”