Greetings from Wadi Musa, 3rd of Oct.

Living Room of 4-BR Apartment

Good to be back in Jordan, at the Siyaha Apartment up-the-hill from downtown Wadi Musa.

This morning the Jordan Parks Project Ranger Mentoring team of Bill  Wade, Bruce McKeeman & self had a meeting with Dr. Emad, the Director of Petra Archaeological Park, and Hani the Chief of Operations. Since our visit during “Arab Spring” there has been some progress evolving towards park management goals, but it has been slow: both figuratively and literally- park visitation for this time of year is down significantly from ca. 2,700 per day to 800. Great time to get over here for that too long delayed visit.

Park management subjects discussed included: Horse Care & Brooks Institute (new Director), Tourist Police (new Commander), Horse Mounted Police, and the back-road (exit by bus) project scheduled to be presented to UNESCO next month. Dr. E. met recently with the National Chief of the Tourist Police and conveyed his “action plan” in limiting problems, from chronic violators to unauthorized vehicles. Park Ranger & Tourist Police teams will be working in 5 geographic zones: TOGETHER; Horse Police will be conducting backcountry patrols; park staff nepotism issues should be stopped in 1-month; new uniforms for Park Rangers to be developed, ordered & issued. In addition the solar project Environmental Impact Assessment is moving forward (with MOU signed with Mitsubishi) and CRM Director has plans from her US study tour for dehydrating toilets that will be considered for remote PAP areas (High Place of Sacrifice, Monastery, Little Petra, etc.)



The Basin from High Place of Sacrifice

During lunch and shopping we saw some friends from our previous visit. Recently heard some fireworks... think the word is out... The National Park Service Rangers are back...