Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk learned he was being replaced via an Interior Department press release/NPS
Not only won't top Interior Department officials return phone calls from Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Dan Wenk, but he learned that he'd been replaced when he saw a press release to that effect this week.
Acting National Park Service Director P. Daniel Smith on Wednesday announced that Cam Sholly, director of the Park Service's Midwest Region office, was the new Yellowstone superintendent. The brief release, which contained praise for Sholly from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Smith, and members of Congress from Montana and Wyoming, did not mention Wenk, a four-decade veteran of the agency who has been at Yellowstone since 2011.
Accompanying the release was a photo of Secretary Zinke and Sholly taken in the secretary's office last week.
"It’s nothing I didn’t expect,” Superintendent Wenk told The Hill. “I guess the best way I can capture my feelings is they are not affording me any respect for the time my 42-plus years with the park service and my career of achievement,” he said. “And they won’t have a conversation with me about what a transition will look like.”
Superintendent Wenk, who came into the Park Service as a landscape architect, rose to positions as deputy director of the Park Service as well as interim CEO of the National Park Foundation.
The superintendent, who has a home in the Black Hills, had announced last month that he planned to retire in March 2019. That timetable would have provided him with time to finish a quarantine process that would allow Yellowstone bison determined to be free of brucellosis, a disease that causes livestock to abort their fetuses, to be transferred to tribal interests and other entites that want bison herds.
Superintendent Wenk, who initially told the Traveler that he didn't think Secretary Zinke wanted him gone from Yellowstone because of disagreements over bison, told The Hill that he now believes the Interior secretary thought the park's herd was too large.
Mr. Sholly so far has declined Traveler's request for an interview.
Comments
Sounds like the work of a bunch of people who think they can conduct foreign policy and manage the government by Twitter.
I think the quarantine program can continue with the next superintendent. That seems to be an odd reason to need to stay
These people have no class. A well-respected career manager with 42 years agency experience learns of his replacement by reading a press release. This is how exemplary service is rewarded.
I wonder how Secretary Zinke would like to read in a press release that he has been fired and a new Secretary appointed. I imagine he would not be pleased. I totally agree with Glad2bretired. These people have no class.
this kind of treatment and behavior has become the new normal. I think wanting to see a program through to its finish Speakers volumes about the integrity of Wenk. And to pull him just short of a planned retirement speaks volumes about this administration.
it's no surprise that Zinke and Trump - corrupt, cowardly, vengeful and immoral persons - would treat a respected career public servant this way. It would be interesting to see whether Acting Director Smith was a coward who meekly went along with an order from above to fire this employee by press release, or whether Smith hoped he'd curry favor with his cruel bosses by doing so. Maybe some FOIA requests or litigation could reveal the ugly truth.