Dan Wenk is being used as an example to undermine culture of conservation, say former park service workers

The superintendent of Yellowstone national park says he has been forced out of his job by the Trump administration over his wildlife advocacy.

“It’s a hell of a way to be treated at the end of four decades spent trying to do my best for the park service and places like Yellowstone, but that’s how these guys are,” said Dan Wenk, referring to the US interior department. “Throughout my career, I’ve not encountered anything like this, ever.”

On Monday, Wenk, 66, was notified by the interior department that he must take a reassignment to the park service’s Capital Region in Washington DC, a collection of monuments including the White House and the Lincoln Memorial, within 60 days or resign.

An interior department spokeswoman, Heather Swift, said: “The department does not discuss personnel matters.” A former park service national director, Jon Jarvis, said the maneuver was intended to send a chilling message and make an example out of Wenk.

Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary, “holds little regard for the esprit de corps traditions of the park service”, Jarvis said. “Dan [Wenk] was set up as the first domino to fall.”

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The purpose, argued Jarvis, was to undermine a deeply ingrained culture of conservation as it pertains to big wildland parks, mostly in the US west and Alaska. Preservation clashed with Zinke’s desire to dramatically ramp up industrial development and monetization of natural resources on public land, he added.

Within the country’s great panoply of public land management positions, no field post is more coveted, professionally prestigious and hard-earned than that of superintendent of Yellowstone national park. Wenk has held the job for seven years.

“Everything you do in Yellowstone is controversial and thank God – it’s because people care,” said Dan Wenk. “People care so passionately about everything.”

Wenk had been outspoken in his desire to create more space for wild bison to roam outside the park into Montana, a position opposed by the influential cattle industry, which represents a core of Zinke’s constituency. Wenk also raised questions about proposed sport hunting of grizzly bears that are a delight to wildlife watchers in Yellowstone but might get shot when they cross the park boundary. That, too, alienated political conservatives who are hostile toward both bears and wolves.

A recent inspector general investigation into nearly three dozen proposed transfers of senior level resource managers in the park service, including Wenk, concluded there was no clear justification and the moves could appear to be motivated by punitive reasons or to force leaders whose ideology was not in line with the Trump administration into retirement.

Phil Francis, chair of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, composed of retired park service workers, condemned the interior department’s action.

He predicted that this would be the first of several personnel moves aimed at dismantling the park service’s culture and conservation mission.

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“With this change, the service is losing vast institutional memory, decades of experience, and it’s happening at a time when the service is facing enormous challenges and reduced budgets,” said Francis.

One of the known architects of the transfer is the acting park service director, Danny Smith, who signed Wenk’s deployment order. According to Wenk, though the two reached a “gentleman’s agreement” allowing him to stay in Yellowstone until March 2019, the promise was broken.

“I was stunned by the way this came down this week. Dan Smith called me with the decision after I sent my proposed retirement plan and I asked him, ‘When do you want me gone from Yellowstone?’ and he said you need to be out by early August,” Wenk said. “Then he said you can still be in Yellowstone as a tourist but you will no longer be superintendent.”