Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk will retire in September after 43 years with the National Park Service/NPS, Jacob W. Frank

Dan Wenk, wistful at times and even regretting that his encounters with reporters as Yellowstone National Park's superintendent were soon going to run out, touched on everything from bison and lodging rates in the park to how he was backed into retirement by the Trump administration during a nearly two-hour call that offered a measure of closure to his 43-year National Park Service career.

Complete closure isn't likely to come, as Wenk is not leaving the agency on his terms and will not, as Yellowstone's superintendent, witness the final step in a hoped-for successful bison management plan that allows park bison to be distributed to other organizations and agencies that desire the animals. He is leaving with many issues around park crowds still unresolved, a simmering controversy over the names of geographic landmarks in Yellowstone, and with hunting seasons on Yellowstone ecosystem grizzly bears scheduled for this fall.

The man who started with the Park Service in 1973 fresh out of Michigan State with a degree in landscape architecture had planned to retire next March, but that date was moved up to this September 29 after Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told him to move to Washington, D.C., to oversee the National Capital Region or retire. Wenk, who had told his boss, Intermountain Regional Director Sue Masica, sometime back that he planned to retire in the spring of 2019, saw little sense in taking the new job for a handful of months.

During the call Thursday with a number of reporters, Wenk would not speak harshly of his forced departure. He readily acknowledged that when he reached the Senior Executive Service of the Park Service he made his talents open to the whims of his bosses. If they wanted him to move to Washington, D.C., that was their call and his to accept, he said. But all along, said Wenk, who was appointed Yellowstone's superintendent in February 2011, it was his intent to retire as the park's superintendent, not from any other Park Service posting.

While Wenk in the past has voiced frustration over the way his career was ended, and told some that disagreements with the Interior secretary over bison management were at the root of the matter, he downplayed that Thursday.

"I think it is true that the only disagreement that I had with Secretary Zinke was over habitat conditons and the number of bison that were in Yellowstone National Park," he said. "I say that, but I also would follow that by saying I believe that we were working through that issue, that we were having very professional discussions, that I'd been told by the Washington office that that is not the reason for my removal, and I do believe, while we did disagree on numbers and habitat, I do believe we were working through that issue."

"One of the worst things that can happen in any national park is apathy. I often say that everything you do in Yellowstone is controversial. And thank god that it is. Can you imagine if nobody cared about what we did or what happened in Yellowstone? That'd be the worst thing of all." -- Dan Wenk.

Wenk got his notice to move or retire about the same time as Midwest Regional Director Cam Sholly got orders to replace Wenk, as National Capital Regional Director Bob Vogel was told to move to Atlanta as Southeast Region director, and as Masica was told to get ready to succeed Sholly in Omaha. At the same time, Lake Mead National Recreation Area Superintendent Lizette Richardson was told she would replace Masica in Denver. Both Masica and Richardson opted, like Wenk, to retire than take reassignment.

Asked whether he thought Secretary Zinke was purging the top ranks of the Park Service by reassigning them to positions he hoped they'd turn down, Wenk wouldn't go that far.

"I would characterize my reassignment as, they made it very clear to me they wanted me to come back as regional director to the National Capital Region," the Yellowstone superintendent said. "It was my decision that I was not going to do that, that I was going to retire. So I was certainly not being forced out of the National Park Service. And it was my decision to retire from Yellowstone."

He also answered carefully when asked what message the Park Service's rank-and-file, and even the general public, should take away from the number of top reassignment orders coming at once. In doing so, he returned to the status of Yellowstone bison as a turning point, and stopped short of venturing how the Park Service's thousands of employees viewed, or should view, the shakeup.

But he also belied the institutional knowledge gained through 43 years with the Park Service, including a period of time sitting at the very top of that agency. And he also showed how politics can change the direction of the Park Service.

Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk/NPS, Jacob W. Frank

"I think every administration that comes into power, after an election, has, takes actions that some people like and some people don't like," he said after pausing a moment to consider the question and weigh his answer. "I've been a part of a lot of changes of administration. I sat in the (Park Service's) director's chair for the change of an administration. And I saw things where, use the Statue of Liberty. I testified in front of Congress about why we couldn't open the Statue of Liberty, and three months later I was testifying in front of Congress about how we were going to open the Statue of Liberty. And it was a change in attitude by the administration. 

"I think any administration has, comes in believing that it has been placed in that position to make the changes that they think are necessary," he went on. "I think it's our job to inform an adminstration of what the impact will be. ... I would relate it back to the discussion with Secretary Zinke. We were having discussions about bison populations with, in the previous administration, in appropriate numbers, etc. Certainly that became a more active conversation when Secretary Zinke came into office. But I think we were doing our job. They were challenging the position that we had taken, we were basically providing information to them to hopefully help them understand why we were in the positions, and ultimately there was going to be a decision. And I don't know yet what that decision will be, but I still believe it's an ongoing, healthy discussion. About bison. 

"I do not know all the things that go into the decisions outside of Yellowstone National Park, so I'm not going to comment any more on those issues. In terms of what should employees think, I like to believe that every employee makes decisions, in terms of where they want to work, where they want to spend time. I've taken a number of moves under a senior executive. I've been in Denver, I've been in Washington, D.C., and I've been here as part of the Senior Executive (Service). Some of those jobs where absolutely not as desireable as I think being superintendent of Yellowstone is. And I think we all make personal decisions. I would not want to speak for any of my colleagues in terms of why they made the decisions that they did. I'm very glad that Cam wants to come to Yellowstone. I think he's going to have the best job in the service."

As for the general public, while the superintendent referenced a news story from the day before in which some Montana ranchers were glad to see him go, he was hopeful that the public thinks "that we're trying to put together the best cadre of managers for the future of the National Park Service."

But he also declined to say, in light of the number of top SES jobs now open in the Park Service, whether there was a long list of candidates qualified to take those jobs and not miss a beat.

Wenk also stepped back from a statement he made earlier this year that he felt "abused" by the Interior Department.

"I've accepted that I'll be departing Yellowstone in September. I guess I feel a little, I regret the use of the word abused. I'm just going to tell you that," he said. "Of anything I ever said in any of these interviews, I regretted the word abused. However, I probably would tell you that it still feels a little punitive. I had told people as early as 2016 that I intended to retire from Yellowstone. I had told my boss at the end of 2017 that I was going to retire in the first quarter of 2019, that I had a few things that I wanted to finish, and we outlined what those were going to be over the next months.

"When I had the first conversation with my boss (acting Park Service director) Dan Smith at the end of April, I told him that I intended to retire. The fact that the action continued to go forward, even though I had announced my retirement I guess made it feel punitive to me," said Wenk. "Having it feel punitive, and having it be punitive, are two different things. It certainly felt punitive. I'm not saying it was."

Wenk, who succeeded in ushering through a winter use plan for Yellowstone that included snowmobiles, who was the lone Park Service manager to speak out against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's plan to delist grizzly bears, and who has worked to see bison accepted outside Yellowstone's borders, said he actually relished the controversies that came with the job, and that he'll miss them.

"One of the worst things that can happen in any national park is apathy," he said. "I often say that everything you do in Yellowstone is controversial. And thank god that it is. Can you imagine if nobody cared about what we did or what happened in Yellowstone? That'd be the worst thing of all."