Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Dan Wenk has announced his plans to retire early in 2019/NPS

Measured against 43 years, ten months is a ridiculously short period of time. Yet that's what the National Park Service has left to soak up Dan Wenk's institutional knowledge.

From a start as a landscape architect, Mr. Wenk has served the Park Service in a diverse series of roles, from superintendent of Mount Rushmore National Memorial and director of the agency's Denver Service Center that coordinates planning, design, and construction, to deputy director of the Park Service and even interim CEO of the National Park Foundation. Yellowstone, of which he has been superintendent since 2011, has been his favorite posting, and one he wants to hang onto for ten more months to see through a years-long effort to rid, as much as possible, the blight of brucellosis that hangs over the park's bison herds.

When he announced his retirement plans last week, some were quick to connect them to a recently leaked proposal from Park Service headquarters in Washington, D.C., that had him being transferred back to Washington to serve as regional director for the National Capital Region. But in truth, Superintendent Wenk said during a short phone call Friday, he had told Intermountain Regional Director Sue Masica last fall of his plans to retire either late this year or early in 2019. And yet, he indicated that his retirement might come sooner than he plans if he's told to pack his bags for Washington.

"All I've done so far is announced my decision to retire on March 30 of 2019," he said. "There's a lot of time between then and now to see how it actually plays out."

To that point, Superintendent Wenk all but said he would he would retire rather than take such a transfer. He's 66 years old, and he doesn't have the energy or desire to commit to a three-to-five year stint at the National Capital Region.

"I think the National Capitol Region is a great region. It's got wonderful people, great parks, but somebody who goes into a regional director position I think ought to be willing to devote three-to-five years to make sure that they're dealing with the issues," Superintendent Wenk said. "I don't have that left in the gas tank, to give that kind of an effort to it. So, I guess I'll never say never; they could ask me to do it and they could tell me lots of compelling reasons why I should go and what their expectations were and the timeframe. So I will not ever say absolutely I will not take it. But right now I don't feel I can commit three-to-five years."

While some see shrewdness in his retirement announcement -- any attempts now to transfer him out of Yellowstone would appear to be purely vindictive -- Superintendent Wenk said he was simply trying to provide clarity to those he works with in his role at Yellowstone.

"I announced it because, after the Washington Post article at the end of April (which mentioned his possible transfer), every stakeholder meeting I went into, every community meeting I went into, every speech I gave, everyone said, 'So, you're retiring. When will you be leaving?' And so, it was affecting my ability to work with all the people I need to work with to get things done," said the superintendent. "And if you're negotiating on behalf of a concessionaire, or negotiating on behalf of APHIS (the U.S. Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) or the state of Montana, or a community group, do you want to negotiate with somebody who you don't know if they're going to be there next week or next month? You need some certainty. So I have tried to bring certainty to the situation."

Whether his announcement prompts P. Dan Smith, the Park Service's de facto acting director, to move ahead, or drop, the theoretical transfer remains to be seen. But much has been made of President Trump's desire to shake things up in government with his unorthodox management style, and his position that the federal workforce must be reduced in number and payroll. Too, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has rattled his vast workforce by claiming that roughly one-third of it is unloyal to him or President Trump. 

While some media reports have tried to tie the rumored move to the National Capital Region as some sort of political retribution for Superintendent Wenk's positions on such wildlife issues as grizzly bear delisting or working to see park bison transferred across Montana (Secretary Zinke's home state) to the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, he tossed that aside during the phone call.

"I don't know that, I really don't," Superintendent Wenk said. "It's not been an issue. No one from this current administration on those three species of animals (grizzly bears, wolves, or bison) has had any conversations with me at all (about their controversial elements). We have had conversations, but they're primarily around bison, and they're around habitat as it relates to bison. And what is the right number of bison to have? We've had lively discussions about that. Once again, I don't know that that's a reason that I was being proposed to be transferred."

To that point, he has been unsuccessful in getting much clarity as to why they would think of telling him to move to the National Capital Region, an assignment he, as a member of the Senior Executive Service, could only turn down by retiring.

"What's been told to me is that it was for the efficiency in the government, and because I had been in Washington, I knew how Washington worked, I had good relationships with Congress, and they thought they could use my skills there," the superintendent said.

But are there bigger issues in the National Capital Region than in Yellowstone, where there are the ongoing efforts to move bison out of the park to other locations, where overcrowding is a key issue that needs to be solved, where there's the never-ending political push-and-pull with the states of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho over how what transpires in Yellowstone and, conversely, those three states, can impact each other?

"Interestingly enough, no one has told me what the issues are in the National Capital Region," Superintendent Wenk said. "I have tried to have discussions with leadership of the National Park Service to say, 'Can we talk about this?' And they have not told me anything other than my skills are needed in Washington, D.C. They have not said anything negative about my tenure at Yellowstone, nor have they told me about any problems in any particular park areas or any circumstances that they felt I would be especially effective (in Washington).

"... I believe that the issues in Yellowstone National Park are the most important that I can be dealing with."

Topping those issues is the superintendent's desire to see a bison quarantine program established and approved by all stakeholders so that Yellowstone bison can be sent to entities that desire to build their own herds. He said Interior Secretary Zinke supports the effort "to put bison through the quarantine process that meets the requirements of APHIS and the states and for them to go to Fort Peck, where they also have a quarantine facility to finish the process there."

Too, he's determined to improve workplace culture in the park, which endured its own episode of sexual harassment.

Whenever Superintendent Wenk's retirement comes, the Park Service will be losing a well-respected manager who has handled a wide range of challenging issues, from reopening the Statue of Liberty National Monument after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, to resolving a long-running dispute over snowmobile access in Yellowstone. His institutional knowledge, which includes agency details gleaned from his stint as the Park Service's deputy director as well as filling in as CEO of the National Park Foundation while a permanent CEO was hired after the sudden departure in fall 2014 of Neil Mulholland, is simply invaluable.